


The Dance of Fire and Water

by AParisianShakespearean



Series: Dragon Age AUs [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: After Jaws of Hakkon, Avvar AU, Avvar Cullen, Avvar Culture and Customs, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Confident Cullen, Cullen wasn't the military advisor in inquisition, Cullenlingus, Cunnilingus, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Face-Sitting, Fluff, Harlequin romance novel story, Jaws of Hakkon DLC, Loss of Virginity, Meta, Multi, Porn with Feelings, Porn with some plot, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pre-Tresspasser DLC, Romantic Soulmates, Self aware story, Smut, Soulmates, Surprises as well, everything is beautiful and there is minimal hurt, he's an avvar warrior instead, inexplicable romantic connection, just a little, romantic smut, sexual explorations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-02-19 10:25:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParisianShakespearean/pseuds/AParisianShakespearean
Summary: They met by the water, and then again by fire. By the water, they joined together, and the fire burned.





	1. Chapter 1

It began really by the fire, but the first time she laid her eyes on him, she was by the water.

Very few places in the world were a paradise to Lydia, but the glen was more than a paradise. It was the most beautiful parts of the fade come to life from a dream, and indeed, when she was there, laying in the grass near the babbling brook and waterfall amidst the wildflowers of blue, she felt as though she were in a sort of waking dream. And that was even before she saw him.

She wasn’t dreaming of love or romance at the time, merely she was gazing at the cloudless evening sky, away from Cassandra and the others, dreaming of a time when she could simply be. Not the Inquisitor, or anything else. Just Lydia. She hadn’t been able to just be Lydia often in her life. Here in the glen she could, and she so wonderfully was. She hoped for an eternity where there was only a Lydia, and nothing else. This place was a piece of that eternity.

She heard the rustling as she dreamed that dream, and shot up from the ground, gasping when she met his gaze. The first time she would, but not the last. He was a man covered in furs, and with a gaze that made her think of amber and honey. There was a strength in him, and a power. She did not know his voice yet, but she knew he made people listen. Brought them to his side.

And when he saw her, he raised his hands in the air, indicating that he had no weapon. And when Lydia rose, he backed away. His hair was golden and wavy, and a scar ran across his upper lip. She recognized his outfit as typical of the Avvar. Simple breeches and boots, with an over shirt under a furred jerkin. But he was not one of the Avvar that she had seen in Stone Bear Hold. And before she could ask, he was gone.

His image burned in her mind, that later when she returned to camp, Cassandra asked her if something was the matter.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Only, was there a man that came near here? One of the Avvar?”

“There were two men that came near here earlier,” Cassandra said. “Passing by, one with dark hair, the other a blonde. They are Avvar, but from another clan. The dark haired one spoke to us in common, though the other was quieter.”

“So they came for the dance?” Lydia asked.

“That’s what he said.”

The Dance of Fire and Water, Svarah Sun Hair explained, was a gathering of different tribes and clans. Over a great campfire and to the sound of drums and bells, a ritual dance would take place in thanks to the Lady of the Skies, and the Air, the Earth, and the Fire and Water. The Inquisition too was invited, in thanks for all that they had done. And indeed when Lydia and her companions arrived at Stone Bear Hold for the dance, the man from the glen was there, though Lydia didn’t think he had seen her.

Her heart quickened when she saw him, and she remembered she wasn’t just the mantle of the Inquisitor. She was also Lydia.

During the prayers and feast before the ritual officially began, Svarah thanked the Inquisitor and introduced her and her companions. As she stood, accepting the clan’s blessings, she searched for him in the crowd, and their gazes met briefly, before common sense took over and she averted her gaze. Then Svarah motioned for him to stand. Cullen, he was called. She could gather that much. She did not know exactly what his words were, though she could guess he thanked the gods, and thanked Svarah, and asked the Lady of Skies for guidance in the hunt. It didn’t matter though, that he spoke a language she did not. His voice had a resonance and lull. Had she heard that voice, in the fade before?

There was a dark-haired man next to him, and Cassandra noted him as the other Avvar they ran into earlier. Rylen was his name, and he was Cullen’s second. They served as representatives of sorts, from the clan of the Lion Hold. “Fancies himself a charmer,” Cassandra muttered to Lydia during the feast, though there was something in the other, Cullen, that drew her, beyond his voice and sense of command. It was something in his amber eyes, maybe. Something carnal.

Once during the feast, he caught her eye once more, and she felt the quickening of her heart. A flash of recognition. Wordlessly, his eyes asked her if she recognized him in turn. Her lips curled, just so in answer. He mirrored the action, before he turned back to Rylen. And though the feast was a grand affair, and Lydia amicably joined in the chatter, and ate the venison, vegetables from the harvest, and drank a sweet honey mead as the Avvar waited for the night to fall, glances were made. While everyone else waited for night to fall and the dance to begin, Lydia took part in another dance, one that involved furtive glances and lingering amber, somehow more intimate than the stolen kisses she once indulged in, in the days she donned a Circle robe and lived as an apprentice.

He sipped honey mead from across the way. His lips would taste sweet, like the mead. Underneath there would be something heady, something distinctly masculine, and strong. Something—

“Why are you blushing?” Cassandra demanded, rather suddenly.

Even though she tried to deny it, her hands flew to her cheeks anyway. “I am not!”

“Oh. Sure.”

Eventually, finally, evening turned to night, and after the feast ended, the clan’s shaman led the Avvar and the visiting Inquisition to the Lady of Fire’s Hearth atop the hill that overlooked the Frostback Basin. There was another prayer beforehand, one Svarah translated to Lydia, Cassandra and her other companions as a chant and prayer to dance until the Lady of the Sun arrived come morning. It was a chant for those that had fallen, and a chant for Avvar to find new life again, and celebrate the strength of the clan. The shaman gestured to the hearth, drew the flames from her magic, allowing the fire to rise. There was the sound of bells and drums that intermingled, mounting and mounting with the rising fire, all leading to a grand crescendo, and it was with that, that the dance began. Children, the hunters, and even the elders of the tribe gathered hands in a circle around the hearth, and Lydia watched in delight. Saw him, as well, outlined by the fire’s glow. He did not dance. Not yet.

Svarah placed her hand on Lydia’s shoulder.“He looks at you Inquisitor,” Svarah said. “Every now and again. He has a question on his mind, and you have answers.”

Lydia blinked. “Answers?” she asked. “I…do?”

“You have questions too. I saw, during the feast. Perhaps you may find the answers with him.”

Cassandra kicked her foot, evidently remembering a scene from one her smutty pieces of literature. Well, that wasn’t something that crossed Lydia’s mind yet, just how…romantic and dreamlike the situation was. Lowlander lady, and an Avvar man from the Basin. It was a story Varric could have written. And it was becoming hers.

But it was silly. Stupid even, and-

“Cassandra,” Lydia protested, reason winning for now.

“Lydia,” Cassandra said in turn, rather mischievously, reason clearly not winning with her.

Rylen, other man from the Lion Hold, appeared near them, so Lydia didn’t have to kick her foot in retaliation. He smiled at them before turning his attention to Cassandra.

“Dance?” he asked, outstretching his hand. “I am told the lowlanders would like to join.”

Lydia leaned into her. “Go on,” she said.

Cassandra grunted. “I—"

“Oh come now. Just like one of your books, right?”

Caught, Cassandra joined, albeit begrudgingly, while also quipping that she hoped to see Lydia out there as well. But Lydia didn’t join, not yet,  kicking some dirt around her with her boot instead.

Maker, she wanted to join. For him.

It was ridiculous, crazy. Her…and…?

Why was she thinking that it would lead to more?

One fleeting thought: it is already more. She saw it in his eyes. She felt it in her veins. And it was so much like one of those romance novels that she and Cassadra coveted. She felt the eyes on her. Could feel the pull, like it was so often described by others who had experienced love and desire. The way his gaze lingered on her felt different from the way others gazed at her. Partially because yes, there was that pull, but he looked at her and he saw something else. Others looked at her, and they looked at her with a morbid curiosity at her marked hand. Or it was a scrutinizing gaze that wondered how she could have lead the Inquisition. Her. A little girl, little kitten from Ostwick.

Yet when this man, this Avvar, studied and gazed at her, he didn’t study. When their eyes met, Lydia knew. He didn’t see her as a curiosity, or a subject to be studied. He saw a woman. Who had ever looked at her since she had fallen from the fade and had seen a woman? No one, save him. And yes, there was the pull. People would stare at her, and it was an invasion. This man, he stared at her, and she saw an open door. And who was she, not to walk through?

She rose, and she grabbed the hand of Vitana, one of the huntresses, moving to the sound of bells and drums. They grasped hands and twirled, before Vitalina handed her over to Eden, where they twirled and moved their hips to the flame. When she was handed over to Cassandra, she looked positively delighted, before she was sent back to Rylen’s arms, and Lydia to another. Cassandra laughed, and Lydia laughed, because she hadn’t seen Cassandra that happy in a while. She laughed because she was dancing, and she knew he was watching.

One by one, Lydia danced with the Avvar. It was custom to dance with each member of the tribe, for the Avvar breathed as one, as Professor Kenric said. She danced until she no longer had to think, and simply was. One with the flame, one with the air around her and the earth under her feet. She danced for the elements, and she danced for him.

Then she was in his arms, and they danced together. She didn’t know it at first, because the two didn’t move to the sound of the bells and drums, they moved to a sound that was distinctly theirs. His arms were strong around her waist, holding and supporting her. No one had ever held her like that before. He held her knowing she was precious and knowing that she would not break if he held too tight. No other man had held her like that. And perhaps it was the dizzy dancing way she felt, or the joy and glee of the moment, but she didn’t think she wanted any other man to hold her like that.

“Cullen,” she said, as easily as if she had said it a thousand times. Cullen. Strong. Cullen. She let the sounds lingered in the hair. No other name would have suited him. Cullen.

“Lydia,” he said, melodically and lulling. Perfectly.

“I…do you…?” she asked, slowly, as he swayed her. She wasn’t sure how much common he spoke. Most the Avvar only knew a few words of Common, if any at all.

“I speak common well enough, lass.”

She would have blushed, had her cheeks not have been warm from the dancing. “Oh.”

He chuckled, and it eased her, as much as it thrilled her. It was unrestrained, and when he laughed, he held nothing back. She wanted to hear it again.

“I’d hoped I’d see you again,” he said.

Her answer was to play with the wisps of his hair at the base of his neck. Did she ever do that for a man before? It was so simple, yet strangely intimate. He felt it too, drawing himself closer to her.

She slowed their movements to a gentle sway, showing him how the lowlanders danced when they were with someone who made them feel fire. For she did feel the fire with him, much more powerful than the fire from the Lady’s hearth. And perhaps, it was just as powerful as the fire that coursed through her veins.

“I don’t…I don’t understand,” she found herself muttering, feeling the flames, being devoured. Frightening. Wonderful.

_More._

“What lass?” he murmured, breath caressing her neck. He smelled oakmoss and elderflower.

A stray lock of hair fell on his forehead. She smoothed it away, fingertips lingering on skin. He closed his eyes, only opening them when her fingertips caressed lips. She didn’t mean to. It happened anyway.

“This,” she said.

“We don’t, question things,” he muttered, continuing to sway the two of them. “We accept, and we take what the Lady of the Skies gives us.” He pressed his bearded face to her ear. Whispered to her, “I feel something with you.”

“What do you feel?” she asked, knowing, but wanting him to say it.

“Fire.”

Slowly they danced, back and forth, the way the lowlanders danced, savoring the fire. Others changed their dance partners, again and again, but Lydia remained in the arms of Cullen, enveloped.

“Lass, we—”

She silenced him, fingers on his neck, willing him closer. “No. Don’t let me go.”

“If I let you go, will you still burn?”

“Always”

She felt herself being pulled. Felt his grip loosen. “No,” she protested, grasping for him, as another Avvar lead her back to the hearth. “I—”

“The glen,” she heard him say.

“Cullen—”

“I’ll still burn. I will always burn.”

The Circle enveloped her. She was led astray, led from his arms to the others while her fire still burned with Cullen. It became a mad frenzy to come back to him, leave the dance and to his fire, yet when she searched for him, he wasn’t anywhere. Nor was Rylen. She wondered if the fire still truly burned, Or was it a dream? It had to have been. Things like this had alluded her, and she never expected something like it before. It was for others, heroines in novels. Not women who had fallen from the fade. Then again, heroines in romance novels never expected either.

But Cullen was real. Perhaps the realest thing she had ever felt.

She trusted that.

When she found her way to Cassandra’s side and asked what happened to the man she was dancing with, Cassandra only laughed and laughed, saying she didn’t know, but she was grateful for the adventure and the dance.“Weren’t you Lydia?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lydia muttered. She knew he wasn’t there, yet searched, she still did.

“What’s the matter?”

She didn’t reply. How could she tell her, she still felt the fire? How she never wanted to stop feeling it?

 _We don’t question_ , he said. _We accept._

It had been one thing after the other, since she stepped out of the fade. For these past two years, she questioned everything. Her ability to lead, her ability to form alliances and secure the money needed to win this war. She questioned if she would even come out of the final battle alive. Yet there she stood, to be alive with the clan, and to feel alive with him.

So, she made a choice then.

“What’s the matter Lydia?” Cassandra asked, once more.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Lydia promised, also promising herself there would be no more questions. Because she decided.

She would let it burn.

“Lydia,” Cassandra said again, “is…?”

“Tomorrow,” was all she said.

And Cassandra smiled a devious smile, because she knew. Just as Lydia knew.

The glen. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, it would burn.


	2. Chapter 2

“You still burn.”

His voice should have still been relatively unfamiliar to her. She had only heard it a few times by the fire as they danced, and even then, it was underlain with the sound of bells, drums, laughter and chatter. His voice shouldn’t have sounded like coming home. But she was home.

Her first question had been answered, the question she had on her mind since the night before, in the Inquisition’s camp:  _Would he come?_   She had it on her mind as well when she stowed away, Cassandra surprisingly being the champion of inexplicable romantic connections and telling her she would cover for her. Lydia decided to champion Cassandra in return, telling her she should see Rylen, when she could.

“It’s like a story, isn’t it?” Cassandra asked Lydia. And Lydia agreed, and reminded herself, she would not question anything anymore.

Still, her second question was still on her mind: Am I crazy?

Cullen, as if reading her mind, smiled. She decided she didn’t care if she was. After everything she had done, she had earned the right to be a little crazy.

In the midst of the dance the previous night, she could not study him as intently as she may have perhaps liked. Instead she felt his energy and power, felt how he moved under the earth, smelled his oakmoss and elderflower, and something else, that was distinctly man. She also could discover, last night in her haze, her body’s inherent reaction to his. How easily their energies, her fire, his fire, molded together. How easily their bodies fit together. She studied him then, because she was able, and because she wanted to. Unlike the other Avvar she had seen, he didn’t have any tattoos, and he kept his hair shorter. It was also decidedly curlier, though that was more likely nature’s choice than it was his own. He wore a brown woolen shirt, with matching breeches and furred boots. The day before, he was dressed for travel, today he was dressed purely for comfort. She wore much the same thing, breeches and a tunic, though hers was white. She had also taken her shoes off, once she reached the glen. If she could go without them, she would. One of her many idiosyncrasies others found amusing. If Cullen found it odd, he didn’t say anything, though it occurred to her he might find many things about her that were strange, what with her lowlander sensibilities. Then again, she didn’t think she could be called a typical lowlander woman. Usually, lowlander women didn’t run off to have tristes with Avvar clansmen.

Though it hardly mattered. Being normal wasn’t ever something she coveted.

She continued gazing at him, pondering him, as he gazed and pondered her in turn. She pondered his scar, thought briefly about how she would feel it underneath her tongue if he kissed her, and then thought of it no more, lest he saw her blush.

Too late. She could feel the bloom, and her hands sprung to her cheeks. “Cullen,” she said, her hands running through her dark and loose waves. “I..."

“Tell me.” He sat down next to her, taking a strand of hair in his fingers, so he may play with it. “Do you still burn?”

They were a breath away from a kiss. Briefly she imagined it again—her placing her hands on either side of his face and pressing her lips to his in a kiss. Avvar, as she was informed, viewed kissing and exchanging breath as an exchange of souls. Such a simple thing it was, merely a press of lips to another. Yet it was everything, at the same time. A person’s hopes, and past. Their future. Everything in their soul. It was fitting, and perfect. She wanted it.

“Cullen,” she said, barely audible, contemplating what his everything would entail. “What I feel with you is…special.” Special, she said. It didn’t quite fit or match, but what other word could she use? “Truly. But…”

“You do not want me.”

“No!” She assured. “I do. It’s crazy, that’s all. But I have found,” she bit her lip, peered closer. “The craziest things I have wanted are the best.”

Their foreheads touched, their energies touched. “How do you want?” he murmured.

Everywhere. Everything.

She didn’t say it, however. Words became muddled and tongue tied, even more so when Cullen’s palm, rough from years of labor caressed her jaw. She was spinning and lightheaded, but it ended all too soon. He removed his hand suddenly, averting his gaze and turning a light shade of red. It was such a contradiction to see it, this man, strong and proud—blush and become almost ashamed.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Cullen?”

“I feel unworthy, to touch,” he admitted. “Lydia. Inquisitor.”

“Lowlander,” she muttered playfully, inching closer, letting him know without words, he was more than worthy. He was perfect.

“Perfect,” he muttered, as if reading her thoughts. Digits ghosted her cheeks, feather light. “And I—”

There it was, that doubt again. So she took his hands in hers, allowed their palms to meet. Calloused hands, yet strong. So different from the hands of the men Josephine would often introduce her to. Soft, betraying the fact that they had not lived. Cullen had lived, and if she studied the canvas of his palms and fingers, she would see the entirety of the life he had lived. His struggles, his pain. His everything.

“I’m not perfect, you know” she told him. “I’ve done things, things I may not be proud of. But I’ve also—"

“Survived.”

“Survived,” she agreed. “To be here with you.”

Just as she studied his hands, he too studied hers. Traced the lines on her palm with his fingers, caressed her digits. The mark faintly glowed underneath the fingerless glove she always wore, a glove that had become her savior since she had fallen out of the fade. It had protected her from prying eyes and invasive gazes, and she had become so used to it that it had become her second skin.

Cullen searched her eyes for approval and permission. He didn’t even need to ask. “You are not unworthy,” she whispered, and she peeled off her glove, and let it fall to the ground. And Cullen kissed her mark, kissed every one of her fingers, bestowing a tenderness she had never known a man to possess. He kissed her hands, held it , and worshiped it. Made it his prelude and beginning, to other things.

“I will not give you anything you do not ask for. I will only give you what you want,” he promised.

“To know you,” she said, almost immediately, closing her eyes as his lips pressed to her neck, making her keen. “Let me know you. In every single way.”

He laid her down gently against the grass, hovered over her. “Well lass,” he mumbled, kissing the parts of her collar that her tunic left uncovered, his insecurities melting away. They dissipated and he turned confident and loving, and she felt as though his kisses would always burn into her skin. “I am Avvar,” he continued.

“How…” she began, but gasped when his bearded face skimmed lightly over the tops of her breasts. It was something she had never contemplated before, a man’s beard against her skin, though she knew something would always feel incomplete if in her times that would come after this, there was not that delicious prickle. But that was fooling herself. She knew something would always be incomplete, if she didn’t have Cullen.

“Yes lass?” he asked, holding her waist in his hands, allowing his palms to linger and bearded face to nestle against her. Neither kissing nor grasping, just being.

“How can you speak Common so well?” she asked, her fingers drifting to the curl of his hair.

He chuckled, enjoying the feel, and compelling her to knead the pads of her fingers against his scalp. “I was twelve years old, in Honnleath,” he said. “There was an attack. Bandits. I don’t desire to tell you. But my mother and father were killed. My siblings and I were the only ones that survived. The Avvar found us, took us in.” He glanced at her, touched his scar. A souvenir, from that day.

She sighed. “Cullen,” she whispered, biting her lip as a kiss was left on the top of her breast. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was the past. I miss them, yes. Think of what I could have become. But I became a part of a family again. We all did. And I’m here now.”

“With me?”

He eased further on top of her, cradled her face in his hands. “With you.”

Maker. He was beautiful. “Cullen…”

“Lass,” he muttered. The weight of him on he was body perfect, and the feel of his hardness against her a fire and a question, and something she didn’t fully understand. For she may have known the basics of it after all from books. Knew how it operated. Feeling it, however, was something else entirely. It was wonderful, knowing she was the one that made him feel this fire. Breathtaking.

“Your eyes,” he continued, lips against her eyelids. “They are water.”

“Water?” she repeated, lips aching, wanting to feel the kiss he had yet to bestow. “Is that so?”

“I’ve been drowning in them, since we met. Drowning in the sea.”

I will only give you what you ask, he said. Maker, she wanted his kiss. All she had to do was ask. “Cullen…”

“Cliodna,” he mumbled, breath caressing her neck.

“Cli…who?”

He chuckled. “When I was a boy, my mother read me a book, about the priestess Cliodna. Eyes were blue, like the sea. Men were said to drown in her eyes. You remind me of her, since I first saw you. But that’s not all, about you,” he quickly assured. “I was told about you. Your strength. Your courage. How you have survived.”

“I wonder, about that,” she admitted. “I’m not the same person I was, since this whole thing began.”

“It wouldn’t be right if you were,” he said her, taking her wrists, placing them over her head so he further blanketed her body. She moved and adjusted, angled her head, so she may surrender herself to him. “Journeys. They change you.”

“You have changed me.”

His smile was radiant. “As you have changed me, Lydia.”

Her name on his lips was music. Perfect.

“This is crazy,” she said again, in a brief moment of mental clarity, a moment that was lost again, when she gazed into his eyes again. Honey and amber. Oakmoss and elderflower, the smell of his skin far more intoxicating than wine. Heady, masculine, and strong. Body atop hers. Fire burning bright.

“Lydia. Tell me what you want,” he said. “I will only give what you want.”

“You.”

His hand was at the seam of her tunic. “Whose hands have touched you?” he asked. “Since this all began.”

“No one,” she confessed.

“Do you want my hands?”

“Maker…yes.”

She hardly invoked the Maker, her beliefs in him never a constant. Sometimes, usually in the moments of despair were when she believed in him the most, for who else could bring such sorrow? Yet when Cullen heard her invoke his name, he was quizzical. Amused even. “The Maker…” he repeated.

She wondered if he still believed, or even if he ever did. Asking him, he merely replied that it didn’t matter what he believed in, because this moment was happening.  
“I wonder,” he began. “Did you even imagine my hands on you, when you were protecting us all?”

“No,” she confessed. “But I want it. I want your hands on my body Cullen,” she begged, willing to do anything for him.

He dipped down, lips ghosting over hers. “And…my mouth?”

“I want your mouth.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

“Ah. Lydia,” Not quite kisses were on her forehead, her cheeks. “Let me worship you.”

Her body had been begging and aching since the moment she arrived in the glen. She felt her want as if it was in a bottle, and the longer he was atop her, and the longer he left kisses in every place save the place she wanted most, the more fear she had that the bottle would shatter. She was long past wanting gentle, the way she always assumed she would want her first time with someone. She wanted it hard. Rough, his body slamming into hers again and again. Hands grasping hips and leaving marks. Turning her over, fucking her. Primal and raw.

“What if I don’t wish to be worshiped?” she asked. “What if I want you to take me, unrestrained?”

“You say as though this is our only time together.” He leaned in. “Later, lass,” he promised.

The promises laced in his words set her aflame. “I don’t think I want it later,” she confessed, all the same.

“There’s not a single way I don’t want you.” He tenderly smoothed her hair away. “Please,” he muttered. “Let me kiss every part of you.”

She surrendered. “Cullen. Have me how you want me. Slow, fast. Just touch me, please.”

He could tease her, taunt her, deceive or desert, and nothing would be enough. A lifetime with him would not leave her satisfied. But today, he could begin.

“Let me be yours,” he asked of her. His thumb outlined her lips, beginning it all. Her lips parted, and he kissed her.

The kiss did not seek to arouse or stir the fire within, though her mouth was slightly parted, her tongue just barely seeking an entrance. Merely, the kiss sought to begin and prelude more. Even so, when he parted, she sought his lips again. It surprised him, she realized, but he smiled, and kissed her again. It was just as soft as before, but he still just as desperate. If the first kiss was a beginning, this was a continuation, a worship that he promised as his lips nipped and captured. His kiss hurt her, she realized. Hurt because she realized that so much of her life was spent without knowing it, and so much of her life would be spent knowing, but not being able to have it. He could kiss her for an eternity, and still it would not be enough.

Cullen, Avvar man that she did not know before yesterday, and somehow shared her soul with. Cullen, a man by all rights, she shouldn’t even have met. Cullen, who she would have everywhere.

 _Litter my skin with your mouth. Mark me for all the world to see who I belong to_ , Lydia’s wandering hands begged and compelled, skimming down his hair as he kissed and lavished her neck, running his tongue along her pulse point, where her heart lay beating underneath his mouth. Posses me, but never leave me satisfied. Leave me always wanting more of you.

She outstretched her arms, and he answered by removing her tunic. She did not want to play the game of having him remove each article of her clothing one by one. She wanted to lay naked before him, show him her body. How strange it was, to want his eyes on her body, with all it’s marks and scars, and stomach that still showed the hint of the sedentary life she had lived in the Circle. She always thought she would feel awkward and embarrassed the first time a man laid his eyes on her naked body, and her small breasts, wide hips and darker arms and legs from the obvious sun exposure other parts of her didn’t receive. In her ridiculous imaginings when her first fancy, Asher, was still in her life, she imagined herself the scared and awkward girl that would cover her breasts when her Circle robe was discarded. It was a foolish image she carried with her to the Inquisition when she met no one else, but when Cullen looked at her then, those imaginings became long forgotten. She wanted his eyes on her body, wanted his eyes to drink her in, no matter how perfect or imperfect it was. All those brief moments in pretty dresses, where she looked at herself and thought she was beautiful, was nothing like this. In those times, she had thought she was beautiful. Cullen looked at her, and she felt it.

His eyes didn’t only drink her in. His gaze swept over her naked body, lust written and ingrained. He didn’t even need to touch her, and she knew that this would be enough to satisfy him. This was a gift to him, a gift he would cherish. She was his religion. His worship, and his adoration.

“Touch me,” she commanded.

His hand was on her thigh, stroking. Close to her sex, already pooling. When he leaned over her body, his clothed chest brushed against her, allowing her to briefly imagine peeling his clothes away, until they were both bare. Maker…to feel his bare skin…

“Where do you want me to touch?” he asked, whispering in her ear.

“Everywhere.”

“Turn over.”

She had laid a blanket haphazardly beneath her before Cullen arrived, and she felt the softness of the furs over her breasts and stomach as she did what he asked and turned herself over. The image of him taking her like that flashed through her mind, and she even braced herself for the pain before feeling the surprising, yet not at all unwelcome feeling of his rough hands on her back. He kissed and grasped flesh, alternating between feather light kisses and teeth nipping, running his tongue over the spots he lavished afterward to soothe it. His hands drifted underneath, brushing nipples just so, but not enough, that she had to wiggle against the blanket to give herself some relief. He chuckled at that, kissing her lower back, and squeezing her plump rear.

“No one has touched you at all?” he asked.

“One man, but we never…not like this, and…” Lydia began, before burying memories away. “I don’t want to remember,” she said. “Please. I just want the now. I just want you.”

“Of course,” he murmured. “Allow me to…make up, then?”

“I don’t want you to make up for anything. I just want us to be together,” she said. “Forget everything. Please Cullen.”

His body draped over hers, he whispered in her ear. “Say my name again.”

“Cullen,” she muttered, feeling the music of it.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Make love to me.”

She felt the smile play across his lips. “Turn over.”

On her back, his eyes never left hers as he palmed her breasts, lightly pinching her rosy nipples into peaks. How perfectly they fit his hands, and as he encircled a nipple with his mouth, she bit back moans and cries.

It amused him. His ministrations stopped, albeit briefly. “Don’t restrain yourself lass,” he said. “I want to hear you. Let me hear you.”

He wanted to know he was the man that elicited these moans from her. She further pooled, and her fingers itched to rub at her clit. “Don’t stop,” she ordered him.

“Of course.”

Her belly held a bit of softness, but he kissed it all the same, running his tongue down old stretch marks from her younger days. He held onto her waist as he left not one part of her untouched by his hungry mouth and worshiping hands. There were so many sensations. The sun, bathing her in light as Cullen touched and kissed her body. The man on top of her, and what his mouth could do. His beard, chafing her skin. The warmth that continued to pool in her center, and the ache. Wonder at what part of her he would worship next, and her reaction to it. She had pleasured herself before, used her own hand more times than she could count, but those times had always been brief. Hardly did she try to prolong her orgasm, or explore her body to see what she liked and what aroused her. She discovered as Cullen explored and discovered, loving everything he did to her. Every kiss, every touch.

She became disappointed, however, when he gave the briefest of kisses to the coarse hair between her thighs. He all but ignored it, continuing a path down her thigh. She made the discovery then that he was quite enamored by her legs, cupping supple flesh and sinewy thighs, nipping and allowing teeth to graze over ankles and slopes of calves. She found it strange that he was so enamored, but the strangeness of it mattered naught as light nails racked down and kneaded her long legs, eliciting cries of delight and words of praise for what he was doing. He traveled down one leg, attentive to every part, and then up the other, giving it the same attention, before resting himself in between them.  
She smirked. Placed one of her legs over his shoulder. He grabbed the other and placed it over his shoulder as well. She shivered when stubble caressed her inner thighs.

“Cullen…” she muttered, knotting his hair.

“I want to taste you,” he said. “Has a man…?”

She shook her head. “Be the first. Please.”

“Will you let me be the last?”

She would have done anything in that moment, for him to end it all and encircle her clit with his mouth. But Maker, she wanted that too, as much as he. Her first, her last. “Yes.”

He breathed her in, the musk and salt. He licked her inner thighs, wet from arousal. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want your mouth. Cullen. Please. Please. Please, I— _ahhhh_.”

Her hips bucked, and her unholy moans, unrestrained and loud, filled the glen and made him keen and eager, further pressing his mouth into her. He laved and lapped at her clit, experimented with different patterns to find what she liked the most. But Maker, she loved it all. Loved the circles he drew with the tip of his tongue, loved it when he sucked, and loved it when he moved down to her slit, utterly drenched for him. He lapped at her slit and used his fingers on her clit, rubbing this way and that way and drawing circles. For the briefest moment she lifted herself up and watched him, and she regretted that she ever didn’t look. She regretted that she couldn’t be an outsider looking in, watching him use his skilled, perfect mouth on her clit, his golden head buried between her thighs, and herself flushed and rosy and screaming his name, and coming.  
For she did come then, his finger tentatively pushing inside, and her legs clamping around his head. And it was perfect, and real, and being with him was the sanest thing she ever done.

“Kiss me now,” she said, breathless, and he answered her fervent plea, his clothed frame on her naked body grinding into her. They kissed and her taste was salty on his tongue, their foreheads pressed together. They exchanged breaths, and they kissed, and still Lydia wanted more. Lydia wanted all of him.

“When we kiss, breath the same air, we exchange souls,” Cullen muttered. “Everything. Or, it is what the Avvar say.”

“I had heard,” she said, breathless. “I think too, we exchanged a bit more than that.”

He laughed against her. “It seems so.”

“It’s still beautiful.” She caressed his hair, wrapping her legs around his waist, “Cullen. I want—"

“Oh lass. I wanted to give you something. Pleasure you. You don’t need to...if you don't want...”

“It’s what I want.”

“Who has taken care of you?” he asked her suddenly, but still softly. “Have you always been alone, while you were off, saving everyone? This is enough.”

“Maybe for now. Not tomorrow.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and she kissed his forehead, and his cheeks. Every part of his face that she could kiss. “Cullen,” she said. “Thank you.”

“I don’t want this to end,” he admitted.

“It doesn’t have to.”

“You must go back though.”

“Yes," she admitted, but that was later. This was the now. "Stay with me a while," she said. "Be with me now.”

They knew eventually the Inquisition would come looking for her, and eventually Cullen would have to return to his clan. But for that moment, they were a man and a woman, remaining in the glen, blissful. It didn’t matter that they were different, didn’t matter that they had come from different places, or that one day, they would have to part.

She thought about it, for the briefest moment, how she would have to part from him. Return to Skyhold, and continue on with her life. Unless…

Anything was possible.

But she didn’t want to think of any of that now. Instead, merely, she wanted to simply remain in this hazy bliss. For just a little while longer, she wanted to just be Lydia. Lydia, with Cullen.

Lydia, standing on a precipice, ready to fall. Or perhaps she had already fallen.

“This won’t end lass, I promise,” Cullen said, and she believed. "Tomorrow. Come back to me."

"I'll always come back," she said, making a promise of her own. A promise, she knew, she would be a slave to. So wonderfully so.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year! Here's some smut.

When he came to her again, he asked to know her journey.

“My journey?” Lydia repeated, laying next to him against the softness of the fur throw she had laid for the two of them, his beating heart underneath her fingertips, her head resting against his chest.

“Yes,” he replied, hand weaving through her hair. “Tell me everything. Every step. What led you here, to me? I don’t care if it takes hours. I want to hear it all.”

Because she didn’t know where else to start, she figured the beginning would be best. And her beginning was always her mother. “She was a gardener,” Lydia said, remembering the tapestry of her early life. “She planted roses and jasmine, and sometimes made perfumes from the petals. I do the same, in remembrance of her.”

“That is why you smell of jasmine,” Cullen said.

“Indeed.” She didn’t even have to ask if he liked it. She knew already, he did.

“Sounds like my mother,” he reminisced. “She made our clothes fresh with elderflower. I still use them, because of her. My family and I all do.”

So that was why he smelled of elderflower. The oakmoss he smelled of must have been for healing, she knew the herbalists at Skyhold used it. “I like it,” Lydia said. “I also like the oakmoss.”

“It helps with soreness, and aches.”

“Are you in pain?” Lydia asked, peering at him in concern.

“Old wounds that have healed. Just an occasional ache.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine lass,” he assured. “But I am sorry. You barely begun your story. I’ll be quiet until it’s over.”

He couldn’t know how happy that made her, his earnestness and eagerness to hear her tale. She could have kissed him right then, senseless and hungrily, but if she started, she feared she wouldn’t stop, and he wanted to know the story of her life. So she decided to save her kisses for later, weaving the story of her mother, and her long, shimmering hair and blue eyes like water, and how as a child, she would teach Lydia how to garden, and make seeds bloom into flowers. A magic, to Lydia’s young eyes. Still a magic.  
Then came magic of another sort.

“I went to the Circle when I was eight years old,” she said.

“Only eight?”

“The chantry doesn’t care how old you are.”

He was quietly raged, but he said nothing, and Lydia stood at an impasse. Either she could have told him more, or she could skip ahead. Part of her did want to tell him what happened, and how exactly her magic manifested. But then that would have made her sad. And she didn’t want to be sad. Not with him. So she skipped ahead. She told him of her relatively uneventful experience at the Circle, an experience that remained dull and uneventful, until she met him. Asher. She spoke of their illicit and forbidden affair, and she could tell he had a few things to say about it, though he was true to his promise and allowed her to continue.

“We were nothing but clandestine kisses. Stolen moments,” Lydia said. “But it was something to look forward to, underneath all the monotony of my life. Until it ended, of course.”

His eyes narrowed. “What happened?”

“We were fount out. He was sent away. And then I was lonely. For the longest time.”

“You won’t be lonely anymore.”

He sealed the promise with a long and lingering kiss, moving her to her back, and pressing himself on top of her. “Cullen,” she muttered, interspersed between the kiss, feeling the smile on his lips. “You…you interrupted me,” she pointed out with a giggle.

When he tried to pull himself off her, with a moderately embarrassed oh, Lydia’s giggles couldn’t stop, and she hooked her leg over him to keep him there. “It’s alright,” she assured, wrapping her arms around him as well. “I had been wanting a kiss.”

“Do you like it when I kiss you, lass?”

“More than anything,” she told him. “Though…perhaps I also like your mouth, between my thighs.”

He beamed with a masculine pride, resting his head against her bosom, and listening to her beating heart. “Tell me more,” he beckoned. “The Inquisition. How did you do it?”

She described the circumstances of how she arrived at the conclave, playing with the wisps of hair at the base of his neck as she spoke of how her best friend Willa was chosen as a delegate for the Conclave, but Willa found out she was pregnant.

“I went instead,” Lydia continued. “Asher. He was there.”

Cullen huffed against her. “What happened to him?”

“He died at the conclave. Everyone did. Save me.”

She didn’t ever know in her life before the Inquisition, that she would always break up her life as before the conclave and after the conclave. She told Cullen the story of after the conclave, and everything that the Inquisition entailed. Becoming the Herald, the fall of Haven, and later being found in the snow. Becoming the Inquisitor. The Elder One, and the Wardens. Going to the ball and almost getting kicked out of the Winter Palace. The Arbor Wilds, and the defeat of Corypheus.

“And after that, you came here?”

“Not immediately,” she said. “There was trouble in the Deep Roads. That’s where we went first.”

She shivered, when she remembered. The darkspawn, the darkness that seemed to claw itself inside her. How she almost thought—

“You’re trembling.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You’re safe now,” he said, rising. “I won’t let anything harm you.”

She placed her hand over his beating heart, once more. How she loved to feel it underneath her palm. And as he murmured his promises, promises that she believed more than anything else that had ever been uttered to her, she realized how the beating heart underneath now beat for her.

It was written in his eyes, his smile. The way he held her. In everything. “Take my heart,” she uttered. “I leave it now with you.”

“What?”

She curled closer next to him. “It’s a quote,” she explained. “From a romance novel, I used to read. Take my heart, I leave it with you.”

“I don’t want your heart, lass,” he said, adjusting himself so his weight on top of her would not hurt her. “I want you to tell me you will always burn.”

“But you have part of my heart already Cullen,” Lydia confessed. “It’s yours.”

She whispered in his ear, slowly. Softly. “My heart is my own to give.”

“Keep it for now,” he whispered back. “Give it to me, when the fire stops burning.”

“What if it always burns?”

In an almost kiss, he muttered, “then it will always burn.”

The kiss that followed left her lost along the tides, a feeling that remained as he traveled downward, nipping at her pulse point. She couldn’t help but smile mischievously as she thought of it—his bearded face kissing her inner thighs as a prelude before he gave her his mouth again, but she had another idea. One she had been thinking and ruminating on since she left the glen the previous day.

He rasped. “Lydia, I want—”

“There’s something I want,” she interjected, tracing his jawline.

“Let me take care of you,” he said, earnest and pleading. “I only want to give.”

Hit with a touch of boldness, she moved him to his back, and began kissing him. Slowly, savoring the heady taste, mingled with a sweet wine.

“Then give,” she said, fingers on the laces of his shirt, wanting it gone, tugging at it.

All too quickly, his hand stopped her. “Lass,” he said, blinking in fear. “I—I don’t want.” He closed his eyes, sighing. “I don’t want you to have to see.”

“You have scars?”

He covered his eyes, a gesture that tried to hide his signs of bashfulness, but that itself only succeeded in revealing just how embarrassed he was. She stifled her laugh. Her Cullen, brave and powerful Avvar warrior. Embarrassed at his scars.

“Oh Cullen,” Lydia exclaimed, kissing him tenderly. “You know what scars are? Signs that you have lived, and survived.”

It eased him some, though when he muttered “Lydia,” he muttered it with a sigh. “Shhh,” she beckoned, interlocking their fingers and squeezing his hand. Since he had made love to her and worshipped her body with a reverence she didn’t think she would ever have, Lydia had become hungry and eager for her own worship and reverence. It was almost overwhelming, how she wanted to show him the same adoration he had showed her. He only needed her to let him.

“Who has taken care of you?” She asked, pulling herself on top of him, and mirroring the phrase he asked her the previous day. “Let me take care you. I want—”

She gasped, her words becoming lost, Cullen squeezing her rear. “Lass,” he growled, a bearded kiss to her neck. His confirmation, and permission. Showing her, he wanted.

He wanted, but her pulse quickened, and she took a moment to ease herself, to fully appreciate what she was about to do to him. In the interim, he squeezed her again. She wasn’t sure if a lowlander man would ever do that, squeeze her rear, that was, and be so pleased in doing so. Or if one would try, she was sure she would avert the gesture and despise it. Not so with Cullen. She wanted his hands everywhere, and his lips. In a strange way, she wanted him to mark her with his mouth. And though they would fade, she knew if he marked her, she would forever trace the phantom marks. She wanted him to squeeze her harder and make imprints with his strong fingers, so she could always recall the feel of the sting. The fade may have marked her hand, but she wanted marks of a different sort. Marks from the man that had captured her, in every sense of the word.  
And she wanted to capture him, as he had to her.

His lips were half parted with lust, eyes large and wide. Waiting.

“Strange,” she muttered, her fingertips at the golden hairs that his tunic left uncovered. A prelude, before a kiss.

“What’s strange?” he asked, as she unlaced the string.

“My want,” she replied, fingers traveling and drifting underneath the seam. His breath caught when her palms and fingertips wandered against his abdomen. Her hands glided against sinews, wanting him slowly and wanting him fast. Desiring a slow exploration of his body, while craving to devour him with no preamble or seduction—all now, and hard. Everywhere at once.

Yet when he have her permission to take off his tunic, Lydia did so slowly, savoring each new expanse of skin. As she came across scars, she kissed and explored, her mouth and lips gentle. There were scrapes and brushes along his abdomen. A long one across his stomach. A burn on his shoulder. So many that it would be impossible to tell the story of every one.

“Hunts, defending others,” he muttered, as she bestowed reverent attention to each and every one. “Such a life I have lived.”

“To come here to me.”

She felt the vibration of his laugh as she further pressed her body on top of his, massaging and kneading strong shoulders, dotted with freckles. She never thought of shoulders before, and how sensual they could be, but Maker she loved the slope of Cullen’s. Wide and big, where hers were delicate and small. In his arms, she felt safe. She felt she had gone about her life before not knowing she was a piece of a puzzle that connected to him.

When she shifted a little, the two of them moaned at the feel of her heat against his hardness. “Yesterday,” she began, lapping at his pulse point, her free hand just barely palming his length through his breeches. It was harder than she imagined. Perhaps even bigger.

It was all a bit...thrilling.

“After we left,” she continued. “Did you touch yourself?”

It was such a brazen thing to say. Yet considering everything else that had happened, the brazenness should not have surprised her. And Cullen arched, wanting more of her mouth. More that she gave him, stroking his length.

“Yes,” he muttered, not biting back his cries.

She felt herself pooling. “What did you see when you did?” she asked.

“It’s too…”

“Too what?” she asked, egging him to continue, increasing the pressure of her hand.

“You don’t have to…” he rasped. “Really. It’s…”

“You thought of my mouth.”

His lips curved into a guilty smirk, and she wondered if she should tell him, that when she went to bed the previous night, her hands drifted to her clit. She wondered if she should have told him how before she even imagined anything, she was already wet. How when she brought herself over the edge with her fingers, the image that burned in her mind was one of her, kneeling before him, her lips encircled over his cock.

Instead, slowly, she began to peel his breeches away, seeking approval before fully removing them. She wasn’t sure what to expect really, though she did not let him know that. She hadn’t ever seen a man naked before. She knew the geography of a man’s body of course, as well as the generalness of what to expect from books and descriptions of other people’s experiences, but whenever she imagined it, she couldn’t stop the redness on her cheeks. There was none of that as she teased him, gripping behind and squeezing the slightly plump flesh of his arse as her own personal revenge for the times he lovingly gripped her, and kissing his slim hips and ignoring his cock for the time being, like he ignored her clit for the longest time the previous day, worshipping her legs instead. Teasing wasn't her main goal or aim, however. She sought to leave him aching with want, for when she finally did wrap her hands around him he would be panting and moaning, but her main goal was to utterly worship him as he had done to her. All those years she spent alone in her bed, her hands drifting to the emptiness beside her in her grand expansive bed, wishing for a nameless and faceless being to touch. He had finally gained a name and a face—and she finally knew why she could never envision the perfect man for her. For how could her mind ever create Cullen?

He was panting and flushed, begging for her lips. She made a path up his chest, finally allowing their lips to meet. She had gotten bolder, even in the short time since yesterday, and wore a long shift to the glen, with nothing underneath. Easier for him to remove, she thought as she dressed that morning, grateful the glen was only a short walk away from the Inquisition’s camp. And when he did take the shift off, so he may cup her breasts, and brush fingertips against her nipples, he grinned mischievously at her bawdiness and choices of wardrobe.

“Really Lydia,” Cullen said, before she made her way back down again, to the golden path of hair on his abdomen. “You don’t have to.”

“I want you in my mouth.”

He did not deny or did not protest anymore. He only allowed, and closed his eyes as her hand wrapped around his length, rubbing the small bread of arousal at the tip around.

His moans and sighs became her guide as she sought what would please him most. The light stroking of her hand against his length, the way the other one searched and stroked lightly over balls. There, and now, she thought. Yes. He loved it all. She leaned down, hair brushing against him. More delicious sensations he relished. And her eyes locking with his, she took him in her mouth.

His girth was a bit wide, and she could not take him all the way to the back of her throat, but she flecked her tongue against the tip, moving down. He panted and moaned and aroused her with his breaths and sighs, fingers through her hair. He did not move her though, but rather the motions were a steady assertion of praise, and love. Gratefulness. And maybe too, he couldn’t believe she was really there, and the way he touched her was his reminder, this was no trick of the fade. Her mouth on his cock, her breathy sighs, it was all real. She drowned in a sea of loving amber eyes. Eyes that finally believed, this was no dream.

He pulsated, and she knew he would come soon. He tried to pull her away so he wouldn’t spill inside her mouth, but she didn’t want to lose this, not yet. She thought briefly of it anyway, finishing him with her hand so she may feel the warmth on her fingertips and skin, but he moaned, and she made the decision. He came, spilling in her mouth with a cry of her name, and as he spilled, and she tasted the salt and the musk, the two of them saw the same stars.

“Kiss me,” he pleaded.

The way his lips met hers, there was a desperation laced with his adoration. An offering of thanks, that made her want to do it all again. But he whispered, “I want you now,” and she was helpless to his plea.

She thought he would lay her down again, but instead he gripped her hips, and skimmed his hands up her bare back, making her shiver. She loved this, their bare skins together. She wanted to keep them like that for a while, her naked body flushed on top of his, the two of them simply being, but she had no time to mourn or even think more of it however, as he began to pull her closer. It was something she never dreamed or thought of before, but as he pulled her over his mouth, everything dissipated, and she was so aroused that he had to swallow her pooling arousal. He lapped at her clit, held one of her hands for balance as the other wandered, gripping and squeezing her breasts before grasping her hips. She did not grind into him for fear she would crush or suffocate him, and as he brought her over the edge and into the waves of an orgasm, she cried out, barely managing to make it off of him before she collapsed. Heavily she breathed, spinning and dizzy and _blissful._

She hadn’t come back yet when she heard Cullen chuckle, hovering over her. His kiss barely brought her back and revived her, though it made the world continue to spin.

“You do things to me lass,” Cullen said, lowly, adoringly. “Tell me. You will never be satisfied. You will always want more.”

“I will always want more,” she promised. She would have promised anything then.

“Don’t go back yet.”

She wouldn’t have dreamed it. So she laid with him, side by side on the furs. She felt his nakedness against her, the strength of his body. Sometimes, she kissed a scar on his shoulder blade, or a freckle. In turn, sometimes he kissed her cheeks or her hands. That was the thing about Cullen. He never neglected her mark. It was a part of her, so he loved it. He loved all parts of her. It was written in his eyes as he gazed at her.

“Cullen,” Lydia said eventually, somewhere between dreams and reality. “Tell me your journey. How you came here.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, pressing their foreheads together. “Whatever happened. However I got here. This is my favorite part of it.”

Lydia saw her whole journey, laid out then.

This. Cullen. This was her favorite part too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I foresaw this being about five chapters, but it might be more. We'll see!


	4. Chapter 4

In the days before Cullen, Lydia would sometimes watch the couples in the Herald’s Rest. Sometimes with an academic curiosity, watching their dynamics play out as she overheard their declarations of love and sweet nothings. Sometimes, she had to admit, she watched them with a bit of jealously, as they made and shared secrets with one another, because they were secrets that had always alluded her. Save with Asher, though she knew now that her triste with him could not even have been called a romance. Indeed it was more of a dalliance, something that made their shared Circle experiences less monotonous. Something to look forward to during the day. And though she remembered and thought of him sometimes, what they had wasn’t love. She came to understand the truth as she went about her journey as the Inquisitor. And then Cullen kissed her, for the first time. That was when she had learned, and knew. 

Before Cullen, and after Asher however, there was _Swords and Shields._

Cassandra had introduced it to her. At first she didn’t want Lydia to read it, as apparently it wasn’t proper for the Herald of Andraste to read such bawdy literature. But one night in the Herald’s Rest, a tipsy Cassandra broke and showed it to an equally tipsy Lydia. Perhaps it was the wine, but Lydia adored the novel, and the hero in it, Ser Donnick. Varric may have said it was one of the worst things he had ever written, but both Lydia and Cassandra loved the way he worshipped his lady, Avelina, and the way he protected her. The two had poured over the novel, and in her drunken stupor, Cassandra teased that this was the best she and Lydia would ever have. Ser Donnick, a fictional character in a fictional story. Little did they know how they would find themselves in their own version of _Swords and Shields_.

 _We met by fire, and then again by water, where our passions burned._ Lydia thought of pulling out her diary and writing those very words, but if someone found it and read it years after she had died, whoever her reader would be would likely assume that the Lady Inquisitor had gone so bonkers from her adventures, that she hallucinated it all in her loneliness. But Cullen was real, realer than anything she had ever known. And there was also the fact that she had Cassandra to back her up. It was no dream, or hallucination. Cullen was real. And so, for Cassandra anyway, was Rylen.

As Lydia had her own rendezvous with Cullen, she learned the next morning before she came to Cullen again, that Cassandra had been spending time with Rylen. 

“So,” Lydia said, running into her on the way to the glen, more than amused. “Seems we both have our indulgences.”

Cassandra didn’t explicitly say she was quite taken with Rylen, the clansman of the Lion Hold, but Cullen confirmed it later, that the two of them had been meeting in Stone Bear Hold. “Oh yes, the two of them have been…getting along,” Cullen said with a laugh. “Apparently she wanted to be swept off her feet.”

Lydia too laughed. “That sounds like Cassandra.”

Cullen spoke of his friendship with Rylen to Lydia, the two of them sitting near the water in the glen. Rylen too was found by the Avvar, though he was younger than Cullen, and at the Hold before Cullen arrived. He was a bit stubborn, but loyal, and a good friend. As Cullen regaled tales with him and Rylen, tales that involved hunts and great feasts near the hearth, Lydia had spent the early morning exploring the scars on his back, and leaving soft kisses to his shoulder blades. Cullen spoke of Rylen and their various adventures, and Lydia spoke of Cassandra, and her friends she had made during her journey as Inquisitor. They talked of this and that, everything and nothing, and while Lydia loved exploring his body, and relished it when he explored hers, she enjoyed and relished simply being alive with him, talking and laughing. Conversation was easy, simple. She didn’t have to think. She could simply say. And he would not judge. He never judged, when so many others would have. She didn’t think she deserved it, and still, periodically thought she had wandered in the fade, or had wandered into an unpublished edition of _Swords and Shields._

Yet Cullen’s arms were around her, and they were real. He was real.

It was their third day together in the glen. It began with kisses and caresses by the waterfall, and after the two laughed and gossiped a bit about Rylen and Cassandra, Lydia asked, and Cullen told her more of her history. He regaled how as a child, his mother would tell him stories of knights and daring adventures, and how the closest thing his small town of Honnleath had to those knights was the templars. In his boyhood, he guilty admitted, he wanted to become a templar.

“I can’t fault you for that,” she assured him. “Some of them did a lot of good. Some of them did bad. I think you would have been a good one.”

“I don’t know,” Cullen admitted. “If my life had been different, I suppose I would have joined, and I would have found out. I used to beg the templars there to teach me what they knew in our local chantry. Apparently, I had showed some promise, one of them promised to speak to the Knight Captain on my behalf. Perhaps I would have trained with them. Become one. But it seems the Lady had different plans for me.”

“Where you raised Andrastian?” Lydia asked.

“Mia, Rose, Bran and I, yes. We were. But…” he sighed, not finding the right way to articulate his thoughts. “It’s difficult. I have learned to believe what feels right. The Lady, the earth, the fire and water. That feels right.”

She pressed her body closer to him. Kissed his shoulder blade. “This,” she said. “This feels right.”

At his beckoning, she climbed across his lap. “It is right,” he said, kissing her. They were slow as they kissed, Tender and soft. No desperation, only a gentleness that made her flutter, and inch her body closer to him. She would have melted and dissolved, had his arms not been around her.

“You said Avvar do not question,” Lydia remembered between kisses.

“No,” he replied. “They only accept. And when I saw you, I—”

“Burned.”

“Burned,” he echoed, cradling her face. “Yes.”

“Did you burn before me?”

“Well,” he began, sighing, “I suppose since you told me, it is only fair. Yes. I knew a girl once. Lena. She passed, years ago.”

She stroked his jawline. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“You asked me about believing,” he said. “Well, there is a story. About Cliodna. I told you before, you remind me of her. At the end of the story, Cliodna learns that the ones we love, they don’t leave us. They are in the stars. They are everywhere. And after Lena passed, I looked to the sky. I saw her there, wanting me to go on. Be happy. Burn with another. I believed in the signs then, the fire, the water, everything. That is when I became.”

“I understand,” Lydia said, remembering when she became. She became when she was handed the sword atop the grand staircase in Skyhold’s courtyard. She became the Inquisitor, and though Cassandra and the others called her the Herald before, that was when she really became the Herald, because it didn’t matter if she didn’t believe. They did. That was what mattered. She would believe for them.

She believed in her, and Cullen.

“Lowlander, Inquisitor,” Cullen said, stroking her cheek. “I never imagined. Never thought before. Sometimes I didn’t think I would ever feel. Not again.”

“Why me?” she found herself asking.

“Why me?” he asked in turn. “There could have been anyone, before me.”

“There wasn’t.”

“It wouldn’t matter either way. I only want to be the last.”

"I suppose I know the answer already,” Lydia said, smiling. “It’s what we’ve been saying. We burn together.”

“I look at your eyes, and I drown.” There was a tender press of lips to her temple. "Yet I never want to come up for air.”

“Make love to me Cullen.”

He laid her down gently, pulled her dress off and away. Ran his bearded face along her thigh, inching closer towards her center. “No,” Lydia muttered, not being able to bit back the moan at the feel of his stubble. “That…”

“Is this not what you want, lass?” he asked, peering at her from between her thighs.

“I want all of you.”

He was silent for a moment, seeming to consider. She lifted herself up, took his hand in hers.

“Lass, you…really. This time I have spent with you…it’s the closest I think I have ever been to blessed. We don’t need to go further, I—”

“Please don’t question me. So many people have questioned me in my life Cullen. I want this. I want. I _burn_.”

He sighed, guilty blush creeping his cheeks.

She grasped his hand, showing him he was forgiven. “You would be my first,” she said, after a moment. “I was never one to think that things like virginity are very important, but…” she bit her lip. “But…what I feel for you is a fire. And I want you to be my first.”

“I want you to be my last. But—”

How would this last? How could we continue to burn?

It was the one thing they had avoided talking about, since the moment the flames ignited. They never spoke of how she would have to leave the Frostback Basion, someday. Someday soon, perhaps. It was inevitable. And he couldn’t leave his clan. Someday, they would part, and—

No.

“Do you want it as well?” he asked her. “Do you want…me to be your only?”

She thought of another man touching her, and she couldn’t bare it. “Yes Cullen,” she said.

“But that may not be possible. You will have to leave, and…”

“You cannot abandon your clan.”

“No,” he said. “I cannot.”

They remained in a contemplative silence, neither one thinking what their parting would mean, not yet. She left small butterfly kisses to his long fingers, before leaving more kisses on his wrists and palms, and then his lips, the scar smooth and silky underneath her tongue.

“You make me happy,” she told him. “Does it matter, what will happen tomorrow? We are here now.”

“I want you,” he murmured, and though there was so many other things on the horizon, so many other things to say, there was only the want. Louder than the sounds of bells and drums, louder than the sounds of her protesting rationale, and the hurt that would surely come when they would have to part.

“If I one day leave this place, and become part of the stars,” she began, the want drowning everything else out. “I want to be there knowing what it’s like to be with you.”

He kissed her hands. Kissed her mark, before their lips met and part. She would remember this moment later, and remember that was how it began. Not a mad frenzy to remove clothes and kiss every part of each other, but something slower and more lingering. Perhaps it was because they had finally voiced it, that one day they would part, and anything other than a slow and steady assertion of love would have been a cruel reminder of that. Lydia would never be able to exactly say why it was like that, other than the fact that it was perfect, but she would always be able to recall how perfectly it began, with a kiss before he laid her down against the furs. A kiss that made promises.

He had laid his eyes on her naked body before, yet he still looked at her nakedness with such wonder, closing his eyes before removing his breeches and laying his himself on top of her. She felt his hardness against her thigh as he kissed her neck, while a calloused hand skimmed down the lines and curves of her body. He could have contented himself with that, a gentle rock against her thigh as he kissed and made marks of his want across her skin, but it was only a prelude to more. He held her breasts in his hand next—small enough that it was rather a perfect fit in his palm. It made her laugh a bit, and when he rose and asked her what was funny, she brought him in for another kiss.

“You touch me like I’m a goddess,” she said when they parted. “I’ve never felt that way with anyone before.”

“How could I not? Lass. Lydia. You—”

“What?”

“Did you ever imagine someone like me, with someone like you?” he asked quickly, before he could regret it.

“How could I ever imagine you?” She stroked his jawline. “You’re Cullen. Perfect. It’s Cullen who I want.”

He rested his forehead against hers, too thankful, too overwhelmed to say anything else. “I heard it may hurt, the first time,” he muttered eventually, his hand skimming down her body. She moaned and arched as his fingers ghosted over her clit, and the wetness between her thighs.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I want you. If what we haven’t done already hasn’t been clear enough.”

He chuckled at that, lowly and joyfully. Maker how his laugh was music. He rose to his knees, and she barely had time to mourn the loss of his body atop hers before she felt the tip of him, just barely at her entrance. Already it was so much, and she felt her heart beat a million beats. She braced herself for the pain, but there was no pain, only tiny shocks off electricity as his fingers brushed against her clit. He made her come with his fingers, a soft rolling wash of tides against the sea as she grasped tightly his other hand, bringing it her lips after so she may kiss his palm and fingers in a thankful ardor.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her, sighing when she slid his forefinger in her mouth, lapping at his fingers like she would his cock. “You’re—”

Her teeth subtly grazed over his fingertip. “Cullen,” she muttered. “Now. Please.”

He was slow, when at last he slipped inside her heat, continuing to hold her hand as she bit back her moan. She didn’t know what to expect, a sharp stab or pain, or a dull ache, but it turned out to be neither. Only a brief feeling of discomfort as she adjusted and stretched to his size. He noticed her wince and tried to remove himself from her with a flurry of apologies, but her hands flew to his hips, keeping him there.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Stay. Don’t ever leave. Kiss me.”

Her last fervent plea was answered tenderly and sweetly, and in just that brief movement of him moving from his knees to rest atop her, she moaned, feeling that slight shift of movement inside her. He kissed her neck as she continued to adjust, feeling the pain that was only slight now, mingled with the strangest pleasure. If it was difficult for him to remain, and she was sure it was, he showed no signs, lavishing her neck and every part of her that he could reach. Even so, she could feel that small bead of sweat on his forehead. He was too much. He wasn’t enough. How could she have lived her life before this not knowing this perfect feeling of fullness? And yet, there was more, and she craved and longed for it. Needed it. So she tilted her hips up.

Any resolve he had broke in that instant, and as he began to move, she spread her legs further for him, nails racking down his back and toying with his hair. He moved inside her and it was no longer a matter of becoming accustomed to the feel of him, it was craving for him, needing him to thrust harder and deeper. He took her hands and lifted them over her head when she bade him not to go so slowly, whimpering when he stopped completely. It was only so only so he could draw this moment out longer, she realized as she wrapped her legs around him, sliding them down his.

Their foreheads pressed together, she felt his smile.

“Are you alright?” he asked, breathing heavily.

“Yes. Don’t stop.”

The two of them groaned once again as he began again to thrust, moving back to his knees to rub at her clit. He had made her come before but never like this, never as he was buried inside her. She came and saw the white hot stars burning brightly, Cullen remaining inside her long enough ride out her orgasm. She came, too starry eyed and languid to tell him she wanted to him to come now, wanted to feel his ending inside her. But her orgasm was his undoing, and he pulled out, grasping his length. She pushed his hand away so she may finish him herself, pumping up and down his cock, and when he came and spilled against her thighs, their cries mingled and filled the glen. Never did their eyes part. Not even when the both of them were starry-eyed, flushed and rosy. Especially not then.

Together, they came back to the earth.

“You’re beautiful,” she said. “Cullen.”

He laid next to her, her back pressed against his front. Her fingers drifted towards the traces of his want, spreading it against her thighs. Bringing it to her lips, tasting him. In turn, strong hands gripped her hips, pulled her closer and murmured sweet nothings.

“I have never felt anything like this,” he said.

“Neither have I,” she said. “But I like it.”

“I don’t want you to ever leave me, lass.”

She couldn’t promise she wouldn’t. Though she knew, part of her would never leave him. Part of her would always remain in the glen. So turned in his arms, kissed him deeply, and perhaps it wasn't a promise, but it was a vow.

He kissed her back, smoothing her hair away, humming a tune she did not recognize.

“What is that?” she asked, relaxed, languid, and utterly blissful.

“My mother used to sing it, sometimes,” he answered. “It’s a song from old Ferelden. One of love.”

She thought of it, for a moment, and what it meant, and his words could have sent her soaring.

“We will be in the stars together lass,” he whispered. “You and I.”

“Do you promise that?”

“I do, Lydia. I do.”

His hand, drawing gentle circles against her back, as well as the sound of the waterfall nearby, lulled her to close her eyes. The furs underneath her body were her anchor, as was the sound of his gentle breathing, and beating heart underneath her palm. _I love you,_ was on her lips, waiting to be said. But she held onto it as she drifted to the fade, savoring this time before her love was declared. And there was no thought of their parting, or of anything else other than the fact that they were wonderfully alive, and together. She was too dizzy, too blissful and content and utterly happy to think of anything other than she was with Cullen, he had made love to her, and she was cared for. She was loved.

“Sleep, lass,” he bade her, and she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story may have consumed me. thank you all for the kudos and comments :)


	5. Chapter 5

Even before her eyes opened, Lydia never wanted to awaken again any other way but this way.

She stirred lightly, feeling the sun on her back, feeling the lingering traces of their coupling on her body. Yet when she moved her hand, hoping to steal away into his embrace, she found that he wasn’t there. Yet there was no flash of fear, no wondering of _did he leave me._ Even so, she felt relieved to see that he did not travel far.

Cullen was standing in the waters, his ropey back toward her. He seemed to know she was awake, for he turned toward her, and beamed. “Lydia,” he said, outstretching his hand. “Come into the water.”

The water was welcoming, cool against her skin, but not too cold, and as she took Cullen’s hand, and fell into his arms. His body was slick from the water, and her hands glided down the sinews of his back. His arms were so strong around hers. They could fight the most grueling battle, and she knew he would not let go. His arms around her were home, a sanctuary, and as his hands glided down her body, touching, and kneading the dips of her curves, he knew full well how his hands were made for her body.

“How are you lass?” he asked.

“I’m…pretty perfect.”

He chuckled, before tilting her chin up and kissing her. Their kissing was a long and practiced dance, a movement of tongues and lips that spoke of a thousand years together, rather than the brief time of the two of them. A thousand years, yet still there was that flame that continued to burn, neither ebbing or flowing. Eternal.

“Your skin is so soft,” he said, gently bringing her to deeper water, and tracing a shoulder blade with his hand. “And burning, when I was inside you.”

“Was it?”

He smirked. “Like fire. I could feel it inside your veins.”

Her magic. “I wasn’t lying when I said I burn for you,” she said.

“Seems you weren’t lass.”

They chuckled together, and she wrapped her legs around him, enjoying the feeling of weightlessness the water gave her. Cullen’s body became her anchor as they drifted for a bit, the water cool and sleek against their naked skins. Sometimes they kissed as she kneaded her hand through his hair. Other times he nestled his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent. If their souls became one during their coupling, this was simply existing together, becoming lost along the same current.

“I love the water,” she idly mumbled after a while “It’s peaceful, and calm.”

“Perhaps you’re not all fire then,” Cullen said. “Perhaps there’s some water in there.”

“Fire and water,” Lydia muttered. “You might be right.”

“Water reminds me of home.”

“Does your clan live by the water?”

Cullen shook his head. “Honnleath was near a lake. “When I was a boy my siblings and I used to swim in the summer. What about your home lass? Was it near water?”

“Ostwick is by the sea,” Lydia replied. “It’s beautiful there. My mother took me to the beach when I was little, before the Circle. She taught me how to swim.”

“Did she?”

“Indeed.” Lydia remembered how her mother would take her to the shallow water, her long dark hair loose and surrounding her like a halo as Lydia would become accustomed to the water. She smiled at the memory, idly caressing his jaw. “Who taught you, Cullen?”

“My father,” he replied. “Before we learned, my brother Bran and I were by the water. He fell in, and I had to save him. I didn’t do a very good job. There was a lot of thrashing.

My father managed to save us thankfully, and afterward he taught us all. Swimming became more fun once we knew what we were doing. I always liked being there, by the water. It’s…calming. And it’s always been my quiet place.”

“This glen. It was your quiet place as well, wasn’t it?”

“And then one day I saw that a lowlander lady was already there.”

They laughed together as he brought her back to the bank, laying her down so he may lavish her in hungry kisses. She sighed contently as he kissed softly her neck and touched her body. He did not seek to arouse when he kissed lightly at her breasts, merely the kisses were in adoration, but arouse he did. She had had him before—Maker, she had him that day. Likely only hours had passed, at the most. The sun was only beginning to drop in evening. Yet instead of leaving her satisfied, it made her hunger for more of him. He could satisfy her a thousand times, and still she would feel the hunger for him.

She sighed at the soft kisses he left across her belly. “May I…share something with you?” she asked him.

“Anything at all.”

“There was…something I imagined.”

She felt a little silly as she continued to lay against the bank, and it made her feel even sillier as she thought of who she was with. Cullen—the man that had made the earth shake with his tongue and hands, and drew several earth shattering orgasms from her body. It was silly to wonder if he would laugh when she told him what she wanted, but wonder she did anyway.

Well. She still wanted.

“What did you imagine Lydia?”

_Me, on top of you._

Maker’s breath, her mouth suddenly felt like it was clamped shut. She wanted to ride him. She wanted to be on top of him, and feel his ending spill inside her. He was a lion. She wanted to be his lioness.

She wondered why this was so troublesome to say. It might have been because of the Circle. The Chantry sisters were notorious for teaching that sex was a thing that should be avoided, company not sought with others. Of course, hardly anyone heeded that advice, but old thoughts within Lydia still lingered. Had Asher not come to her first, they certainly wouldn’t have ever been together, and most of the times that they were together were times that he instigated. In fact, their entire relationship was based on what he wanted. Though those at the Circle liked to twist that around, when their affair was found out. Lydia was the instigator, it was all her fault. How wrong they were.

The longer she thought, the more she came to understand that wasn’t really it. What happened at the Circle had no bearing on her life anymore. The truth was, she wondered if Cullen would even like it if she took control. (But could her simply being on top even be considered her taking control? She wasn’t really sure.) She wasn’t sure of anything, really. Only that Cullen made her feel wonderful, beautiful, and alive.

“What’s the matter lass?” Cullen asked. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“I want to ride you.”

It all blurted out suddenly, but she didn’t regret it. Not until his eyes widened, then he burst into uproarious laughter.

“Cullen!” she croaked, blushing and covering her face. “Please don’t laugh.”

“Oh Lydia!” He kissed her forehead. “I thought you were going to tell me you didn’t like it, or I wasn’t any good, or something like that!”

She was stupefied, but his laugh was so joyous and wonderful, that she had to join in his titters. “Cullen,” she exclaimed, holding him closer. “I thought it was obvious how much I enjoyed that. Enjoyed you.”

“I heard, sometimes, well…It was Rylen. Said some women fake it when their partner isn’t very good, and I well—”

“I didn’t fake it, I promise,” she said, gently moving him to his back, so she was in control. The motion seemed to thrill him, and she made a mental note of that for later.

“I didn’t hurt you at all?”

She was almost overwhelmed at his earnestness, his concern, and his caring. Who in the Inquisition had been concerned for her? A few people yes. Cassandra, Dorian, her inner circle always asked her how she was doing, and if she was well. Yet at the end of the day, she was never the most important thing. She understood it, too. Their mission was truly what mattered. Not if she was too tired, or inconvenienced, or bothered by what she had seen.

Yet Cullen was the first that truly made her feel like she was the most important thing. “No, you didn’t hurt me,” she promised, her hand drifting down, nails light against his thigh. “I promise.”

“Good. I…” his words caught, as she just lightly grazed over his cock. “I—”

“What darling?”

He flushed at the endearment “Darling?” he repeated.

She climbed astride him, adoring how this wonderful, beautiful man, brave and strong, could become so undone at the simplest terms of endearment. “Yes, darling,” she said, leaning down, kissing him fervently and tenderly.

His hand was down her back. “You’re so warm. Do you want—?”

“Maker, yes.”

He guided himself inside, and she helped him, moaning at the feel of him this way. She was a little sore from before, but it didn’t matter as she slid down his length. Her want for him, her fire and burn, was far greater and louder. He was exquisite this way, her astride his hips as she sank into him.

“Let me take care of you,” she said. “Beautiful, radiant man. Cullen. Darling…”

“Lydia…” Cullen murmured, rising so he may hold her in an embrace, kiss her neck as she moved. “Lass. Lydia, Lydia…”

He invoked her name as a fervent plea, like perhaps she would have invoked the Maker. She had never felt so completely one with another before, even during their first time, when Cullen took her maidenhood. But she sank into him again and again and felt the beating of his heart next to her own, and felt the way he arched and seemed to implore his body to dissolve into hers. He knew exactly where to grab, where to hold her. Where to squeeze, and where to kiss. This was all so much, her love for him.

Her love.

“Cullen,” she cried, invoking his name, and hearing her voice crack and break with tears.

“Why are you crying?” he asked her tenderly. “Should we stop?”

“No, don’t stop,” she said, his kiss bringing her back to life. “I’m only…You make me so happy.”

“I love you Lydia.”

“Cullen.”

There was another kiss, one coupled with nimble fingers at her clit, that sent her soaring to the heavens. “I love you too.”

He felt her come around him and began to protest, begin to try to pull away. “No,” she begged. “I want you. I want…”

When he came inside her she felt as though she had been awash in the tides again. And as his breathing returned to normal, and the two of them eventually were drawn back to earth, Lydia came to the realization that they would be never back to earth. This glen, didn’t exist on any plain. This glen was in the heavens, they were in the heavens, and she would never part from him so long as she had her soul.

“Don’t leave me,” he said. “Come with me. Lydia. Come with me back home.”

She held onto him harder. “Cullen, what about the Inquisition? My people? I can’t…”

She thought he would protest, tell her to stay anyway, and none of it mattered. Yet he closed his eyes, knew. Just as she knew that the thread of duty that ran through her, was the same one that ran through him. Unless-

“Come with me, Cullen. Come back with me.”

“The lady Inquisitor, with an Avvar barbarian?” He laughed, but it wasn’t the joyous laugh she had grown to love. It was harsh, and bitter. “I know what they would say. The lowlanders—they come here and judge us already, for our customs and what they believe to be true. No. I left that world. I wasn’t meant for that world. This is where I belong, protecting them. I must not leave my duty.”

“Neither can I.”

He didn’t reply to that. She held him closer. “Do you know how much I want to go away with you?” she asked him. “All my life I have wanted to escape, and people have told me that I can’t. Now you want me to escape with you, and—”

“Maybe you can.”

She closed her eyes, biting back tears. “I don’t know.”

“Then I’ll make every last moment I have with you last.”

He held her, comforted her. Took her back to the water, where they stood under the water together, and let the pour of the stream wipe away her tears. “Don’t cry,” he bade her. “We are here now. We haven’t parted yet.”

“I don’t ever want to part from you.”

“Don’t then. Stay with me. By my wife, my only.”

His wife. How she loved hearing the word, loved hearing her name linked with his that way. His wife. Her husband. “I want it so much,” she murmured, “to be yours.”

“Then you are mine,” he said. “As I am yours.”

Their kiss did not promise they would never part. Merely instead, their kiss made what was already true, even truer. She was his, he was hers.

“Let me be your wife,” she murmured.

“Only if you would stay.”

“But part of me will always stay here with you. Part of me will never leave.”

“Then that is enough.”

It wouldn’t be. Not if she could have him, always. But they kissed in the evening light, and they could fool themselves into thinking that it would be. If only, for a little while.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for the response :) Please enjoy this chapter <3

“Are you happy, my love?” she asked him, on the fourth day they were together.

“Happier than I ever have been. Happier than I ever will be again,” he answered, kissing her hand, like a knight would his lady.

She parted from the glen, back to the Inquisition. It was like waking up from a dream, a reality she had never fully comprehended, and that fact was only becoming more apparent as Cullen became the only thing she could ever understand. There too was Cassandra, equally as enthralled as she, just with someone decidedly more brunette than her own Avvar warrior.

“He was telling me,” Cassandra said, as the two of them sat by the fire in the Inquisition’s camp, “that everything is temporary to the Avvar. They take their pleasures when they can then. But he looks at me, and I…”

If something in Cassandra’s pride, the same pride that read smutty literature but didn’t want the general public to know about it would not finish the sentence, then Lydia would.

“It’s forever,” Lydia muttered, starry eyed and dreamy.

Sheepishly, Cassandra nodded. “What will we do then, Lydia? If what Josephine says is true about the Exalted Council, we’ll have to leave.”

She bit her lip, falling and feeling as though she was going to collapse, even as she thought of it. “I don’t know.”

“It will come, sooner than we may want.”

“Then we should make the most of our time.”

So Lydia and Cullen did, as too, did Cassandra and Rylen. Every day Lydia would travel to the glen, and every day, she would be with Cullen. She did not ever say, _Cullen the day is coming soon, the day that we will have to part,_ but Cullen knew her better than anyone she had ever met in her life, and knew there was something. His love then, matched hers. They met and joined together, becoming a desperate molding of flesh and fire. Ingrained in the way he touched her and made love to her was his longing, and his desire.

 _Always remember how I touched you lass_ , he murmured one night, cradling her body close to his. _Remember how I love._

He ingrained his love, bruised her with it. And Lydia had never been so happy, blissful, and overwhelmed. For what would he say, how would he react, when she told him of the Exalted Council?

Perhaps it hurt more than she thought it would have, when he did not beg her to stay.

The day after Cassandra told her the day had come, and they would have to leave the Frostbacks and travel back to Skyhold, Lydia had come to him as she always had. They had not made love at first as they usually had done, and perhaps she should have told him then, but he was so happy, she could not bring that melancholy yet. Selfishly she wanted to recreate the earlier days of their love, untainted as they were with the looming thoughts of leaving. So when he stripped her of her clothes, and brought her to the water, Lydia became perfectly content to do nothing save exist in his arms. Then as afternoon turned to evening, they made a fire to dry by it, and he covered their naked bodies in furs to protect themselves from the wind. Even then, it remained unsaid.

He stroked her arm after a while, as she stared at the fire’s dancing flames. She knew he knew there was something she had to say, but whereas some would have prodded and made demands, Cullen waited until she was ready. Beautiful, wonderful man, one who gave such love. Respected her, when others would not have.

“You have been elsewhere today lass,” he said, as night began to fall. “My love. Lydia.”

He never tired of calling her love. Such a word it was. She closed her eyes, as she pondered it, curling herself next to him.

She had to say it then, didn’t she?

“Cullen,” she began, voice wavering. “I’m going to have to leave. I am going to have to leave tomorrow.”

He said nothing. Only closed his eyes, and perhaps because she had braced herself for the hurt and the pain, that became almost worse. She touched him, slowly and almost hesitantly, like the way she would have done the first time she touched him. “I at least thought we would have another week together, before I would be called away again,” she said, as if that would make it better. “But the Exalted Council couldn’t be held off anymore. It doesn’t mean anything to me, but…”

“Then why go? I heard the stories. You saved them all. You don’t owe them a thing.”

“I want more than anything to stay here, with you,” she confessed. “Really, I do. But Cullen, there’s—"

“Duty.”

She nodded. “Duty, yes.”

He looked to the flames. “Then I understand.”

That was when everything spun.

He continued speaking, but she didn’t know what he was saying—something about duty and honor maybe, and how they both likely knew they couldn’t always remain in the glen, but it wouldn’t matter, because they would always burn. It was nothing that Lydia wanted to hear. And she was spinning, because everything she thought she knew of him was altered and shattered.

The Cullen that made love to her, engraved his lust in her skin and wove his love into the stories he told her, was not this Cullen now, that merely kissed her hands like a knight in silver armor who begged for a lady’s favor. She didn’t fall in love with a silver knight. She fell in love with Cullen, an Avvar clansmen. A warrior. And like a warrior who fought till the end, she wanted to hear him demand her to stay. She wanted him to throw her to the ground, make love to her. Have her come around his fingertips and then around his cock as he slammed into her, and left her quivering until she forgot there even was an Exalted Council.

“I wish we had more time,” he said. “I do. But…”

“Was this always temporary for you Cullen?” she found herself asking. “When you told me you wanted me to always burn, was that a lie?”

“No,” he stated. “I want you to always burn.”

“But will you?”

He did not speak. Not at first. “We come from two different worlds.”

“That didn’t matter when we were together.”

“I was taught that if you love something, then you must know when to let them go. I don’t want to. I never wanted to, even though I knew.”

“Then tell me to stay.”

He didn’t even so much as glance at her. “You won’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she exclaimed, tired of him being a coward, and looking away from her, that she tilted his face toward her. “Show me you love me, show me you want me here, more than anything in the world!” She clung to him, grasped his tunic, and pulled him into her. “Dammit Cullen! I love you. And yes, there is duty, and there is honor, but there is also the fire. Will you still burn for me, Cullen? Will you, or was this always temporary? Was—”

She cried out when his lips crashed into hers. Neither gentle yet rough, his lips were firm, and her hands flailed, so engrossed in her words that she didn’t expect or even think he would answer her pleas with hungry kisses. But she wanted more still. Wanted all of him.

He pulled away, when she just barely reciprocated the kiss, her body protesting the loss. “Lydia,” he muttered, holding her face in his hands. “When I asked you to be my wife, I wanted you to be my only wife. Until one of us goes back to the stars.” He rested his forehead to hers, and she knew he was biting back the tears. “I don’t want you to leave me. Not at all. Never. But I won’t ask you to stay with me. I can’t do that, tell you to ignore your duty when I cannot ignore mine. So I won’t ask you to stay. All that I ask, is that you come back.”

“Cullen,” she exclaimed, desperate, enthralled, lost. “Cullen. I—”

“Let me not say farewell. Let me say until we meet again.”

He laid her down against the furs, uncovering themselves before the fire and before the stars. He rose to his knees as his hands skimmed down her body, the shapes and plains familiar to him after their time together, yet still a wonder in his eyes. She took a moment to gaze at him, take him in. Remember how he looked by the dancing flames and by the water, eyes heavy with desire, lust, and sadness.

She traced one of his many jagged scars. He had told her in their time together, where some of them had come from. The one she happened to gently trace came from one of the hold beasts. _Did it hurt badly?_ She had asked, and he merely shrugged it off, though the way he traced it afterward indicated it did. It occurred to her after that, that he didn’t want to worry her, or let her know how much pain it had caused.

He didn’t hide it now.

She felt his cock between her thighs, against her core, and she was reminded of the first time. She took his hand, brought it to her breast, wanting something more than lovemaking. She wanted a possession.

“Say goodbye,” she murmured to him. _And don't hold back._

“For now. Only for now.”

“Yes,” she breathed, as he slid inside her heat. She had touched herself when she had awakened in her tent alone without him, yet her own hand barely satisfied her. She needed the feel of him, needed the burn that had become so welcoming and familiar.

“How do you want me lass?” he asked, his hands grasping her hips as she ached to feel him move. He further slipped inside, their breathing hitching. “I…I don’t think I can be gentle, but…”

“Then don’t be,” she commanded.

“Are you sure lass?”

“Yes.”

“Lydia.”

“Fuck me.”

He chuckled a little at her demand, and for a moment they weren’t on the verge of parting, they were simply lovers, who were together and blissful. By the fire and under the stars he was inside her, and he thrust into her slick heat as he grasped her hips so hard that he would leave marks. Like a wildcat she mewled, ordered him to go harder, and he growled as his hands grasped harder and harder as they dug into fleshy hips.

_More._

She stopped him abruptly, Cullen moaning at the loss. She pumped his cock once, and then again before she turned herself around. Hard and deep she wanted him, yet as once more he thrust inside, on her hands and knees she was overcome with how primal this was, even more so by the light of the fire in the glen. Primordially he fucked her, the sound of flesh slapping into flesh surging a tide of raw desire and need. Yes. This was her brave warrior. This was what she needed and had craved those years alone. Something more than making love, and indeed Cullen did more than make love by the fire. He possessed her body and her soul. growling and hissing and murmuring words of love and adoration all the while. They were words that were such a stark contrast to the raw primality of his thrusting hips, sweet nothings of how beautiful she was, how he was lost to her.

Lydia wailed, and the flames by the fire ignited. Whether it was her own magic drawing from her lust, or the stars above witnessing their act and making the flames dance, Lydia couldn’t say. She had one sole soaring thought, of how this was the only way she would ever want to say goodbye.

She sank down onto her stomach, her breasts tickled by the furs. He spread her legs apart so he may rest atop her, and his body was slick with sweat. The scent of man, smoke, fire, water, sweat and sex mingled in the air, becoming a sweet intoxication. His hands dug into her back, his bearded face pressed against her cheek. He nipped just so, sending frissons down her body as he grazed her ear lobe, taking it between his teeth. A kiss, she needed his kiss to bring her back, remind her she was still grounded to the earth.

“Lydia,” he breathed, as she tilted her face toward him, so he could bestow the kiss she craved so deeply. “Lydia…”

“Cullen.”

He reached around, found her clit with his fingertips, and rubbed small circles. “Think of me,” he said. “When you’re in your bed, alone, think of me in your grand quarters, your bed, on that quilt made of silks. Remember how I took you. Imagine your hand is mine. Imagine I’m inside you. Come for me.”

“Make me come for you now.”

He pressed his fingers down harder, right there. Shifted his hips, until he was right there. It was not softly that she came, but too much all at once, like the rough primordial way he had taken her. She came and she screamed his name. Feeling her end too, made his own nigh. He pulsed inside her, and came with a strangled moan that left her satiated, and satisfied. Satisfied, but not complete.

Her ears were ringing, and the world spun. She couldn’t come back, as she had before in their last times, because that part of her soul that she didn’t know she had, she had given to Cullen. Only since she had given it had she known it was there, and she would not have it again, so long as they were apart.

She would not cry. She would not let that be one of the last things he saw of her.

They unwound their bodies, before winding together again, Lydia’s back toward the fire as he pulled her flush against his frame. They still did not drift back to the earth.

“Stay with me tonight,” he asked of her. “Lydia. Stay.”

“I may not leave come morning if I do,” she admitted, and even then, his arms wrapped more tightly around her. “If I stay, I might be lost.”

Tender kisses pressed against her temple and forehead, lips brushing hers in a slow meeting that lingered.

“Maker,” she muttered. “I already am lost.”

“You will come back though. You will come back.”

The thought was fleeting, but there, and she had to say it. “What if I don’t Cullen, what will you do?”

“You will.”

“But what if I don’t?” she asked, pleading. “My mark. It…”

“Has it been hurting?”

Only when they weren’t together. At first it was a tingle. Then it got worse. Yet with Cullen it was all fire, and there no pain at all.

“It’s fine,” she said. “But…”

“You will come back,” he promised. “To believe anything else…I can’t.”

“One last time.”

“What lass?”

“One last time,” she said once more. “I want you, one last time like this. In our glen. Now. Please.”

He left a long and lingering kiss, before he carved his love onto her body, and promises that they would be together again. He left not a single expanse of skin unmarked by his hands or mouth, and when he finally seated himself between her thighs, he kept her on the brink for what seemed like hours. At last though, he made her come with his mouth, not allowing her orgasm to subside as he slipped inside. They made love slowly, hands grasping and interlocking, eyes never wavering from the other.

His hand drifted toward her clit, and together they came together as the stars gleamed.

“I love you,” he murmured.

“I love you too.”

“Then it is so. You are my wife. Under the stars we made it so.”

He reached for his knapsack, pulling something out that she had never seen before. A silver coin. A coin from Ferelden.

“My brother gave this to me when I was very young,” he said. “Lowlanders…I know, when they join in union, they exchange rings. But I have no ring to give you, only this.”

She took it in her hand, the coin more precious than any jewel, or diamond ring. “Cullen,” she murmured, holding him. “I am your wife. You are my husband. My mate. My second self.”

“Take my heart, I leave it with you.”

No more time for words anymore, yet no going either. She stayed the night with him, his heartbeat lulling her into the fade. She stayed, until morning came. And when she left, she took his heart, as she left her own with him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it looks like our little romp in Avvar AU land will be concluding soon! This chapter kind of bridges everything together and we'll be getting ready for the climax soon! (Pun totally intended.)

Months past, since the flames first danced. He had longed since returned to the hold, to the same routines. Still, he burned for her. He never stopped. He would never stop. Even when a cycle of the moon passed. And then again another since his arrival back. Still the flames danced, his want not subsiding. Nor his love for her.

Cullen imagined Lydia often after they had parted, in a time and place that was foreign to him. He saw her in ballgowns like the ones that were in the book of Fereldan fairy tales his family had growing up. It was one of his family’s few possessions they were able to take from Honnleath to the hold. He always imagined her in a blue dress, the color of the sea, the color of her eyes. He saw her dance in a golden palace far from him, the silks of her dress shimmering. He saw a man, one whose hands were not rough and calloused from years of hunting and fighting kissing her hand, offering her to dance the way the lowlanders danced in that golden palace. Refined and proper, and lacking the heat and the beauty of the dance by the Lady’s hearth.

That wasn’t Lydia, or not at least the Lydia Cullen knew. The lass he knew was fire and water. She burned, yes, but true fire could be extinguished. Water was more powerful, because water could endure. So could his Lydia.

Time passed, three cycles of the moon in total, and the augur told him it was time for him to take a wife. He refused.

“If what the stones say, you will become thane of the hold,” Mia told him as she sharpened her blade afterward, Cullen chopping wood for the hearth. “You must take a wife.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s what Lena would have wanted.”

“It’s not Lena.”

“Then what is it?”

He didn’t speak of Lydia to his family. He might have thought keeping it to himself would have better kept the memories of her skin and flame alive. Of course Rylen knew of Lydia, as he himself knew of Cassandra, Rylen’s own lowlander woman. But what occurred between Rylen and Cassandra was theirs and theirs only, as was what happened between Cullen and Lydia. Cullen did not speak of the intricacies of what occurred between his lass and he. He wanted only the stars, the water, and the fire to know. He too kept the sound of her moans to himself, the way her skin felt. He only said to Rylen they were together. They were together, he loved and he burned. To his family however, he said nothing at all.

He didn’t even so much as utter her name to his siblings, believing in some strange way if he spoke her name, he would be admitting she was in the past, and no longer part of his future. Yet then, one night by the hearth of the fire, to Mia, and to Bran and Rose, he spoke of his lass, his Lydia. He told his family he wanted her. He told them that they were bonded. Perhaps not in front of the augur or the rest of the hold, but under the eyes of the Lady, they were bonded. Eternally so.

“It was a woman, then,” Mia said, knowingly. “We suspected.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Rose asked. “Cullen?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, feeling foolish. “But now you know. I cannot take a mate, not so long as Lydia is alive, and not so long as she burns. I can’t.”

Mia said nothing in return for a moment. Not until some time had passed, and Cullen knew that she would say something he would not like.

He was right. “Perhaps you were never supposed to have her forever,” she said, grave.

There was a quiet anger, as he shook his head. They were forever. In a life full of temporary, Lydia was never meant to be only just. She was forever. Mia protested, tried to get him to see reason. “But Cullen, she is—”

“No Mia,” he hissed. “You were not there. You do not know.”

“All things are temporary brother. Even love. Look at our parents.”

He shook his head. “They are eternal, in the stars together,” he said. “I thought you believed that. I thought you all did.”

Rose smiled at him. “I still believe.”

“And it is how Lydia and I are.” He was pleading with them now. “I look at her, and I know. That can’t be temporary for anyone. You too Bran, Rose, Mia. All of us should feel something like that. Because it’s the most—”

“Brother,” Branson began, putting his hand on Cullen’s shoulder. “She is the Inquisitor. We all heard the tales about her from the wandering caravans, and they even spoke about her in the villages. Let’s say she doesn’t come back from this Exalted Council. What will you do?”

“She will come back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

Branson sighed, as did Mia. Rose was the only one who didn’t protest or try to dissuade him. She merely looked at him and rubbed his shoulder in a silent _I’m here._

“You cannot live in the past,” Mia said. “Cullen. So many moons have passed. If the Lady favors you for our thane, you must—"

“I know,” Cullen said. “Mia. You must know. I would never leave our clan. I swore to protect the hold, and us. But Lydia…”

“This is a hard life we live,” Bran said. “What other lowlanders would choose this?”

“We didn’t choose this life. It was chosen for us. Just as I was chosen for her.”

They said no more that night.

 

* * *

 

 

It was a ritual. An addiction he had, stroking, and touching himself as he thought of her.

In the first three cycles of the moon, it was enough to think of their joining in the glen. He grasped his cock as he thought of slamming into her, and came hot and sticky in his hands as he saw her ride him, bringing his hands to her breasts. The longer time had passed the more he worried he would forget the sound of her laugh, the feel of her kiss. The way she touched him. The way she said I love you.

Another cycle of the moon. Four in total since last he saw her. He sat before the great hearth in that time, stood before the entire hold. He was favored for thane. His people clapped and celebrated, and they danced before the hearth to welcome prosperity into the hold for the new leader. The elders came to him, and he was asked who he would take to be his mate. He couldn’t give them an answer. Only his family and Rylen knew of the lowlander he loved with all his heart, and only he knew how he still lay awake at night aching. He touched himself in his grand bed at the center of the hold, and he was no longer imagining their joining, but he was imagining her kiss. He was remembering how it felt to discover her body, molded and shaped as it was from years of being the Inquisitor, years of not expecting or thinking a man would ever touch her as he had. He sought to make up for a lifetime with his kisses and caresses, draw moans and heady breaths from her, sounds she never knew she could make. If only she knew in the times that he touched her that perhaps touching her gave him more life than it did her—he needed to hear her moan, needed to touch her body. His temple, his religion, his Lydia…

_Cullen._

She was there. Next to him, pulling her body close to his. Caressing his face and joining their bodies. Side by side they lay. Legs became entwinned, kisses bestowed.

Why was he still sad?

 _Lydia,_ he breathed, realizing. Knowing. _This is a dream._

 _A good dream,_ she said, kissing him. _Cullen. My love_.

_Do you love me still?_

_I’ll never stop._

_But how can I be sure. This is a dream Lydia. This is a dream. I don’t…_

_You looked into my eyes, and you felt my fire and the way I burned when we were in the glen. Do not question what you know. Cullen. My love. Cullen._

He slipped inside her, in the dream. Held her as he made love to her, drew her soft and rolling end with his fingers. Do not question she bade him again. _Cullen, Cullen, Cullen…_

He woke in tears that morning. Tears so hard that he did not know Rose had entered his tent, not until she was stroking his hair.

“Cullen,” she said, holding him as the last tears escaped. “Cullen. I know. I know.”

“Rose,” he muttered. “I—”

“Go to her.”

He clenched his fist. “I can’t,” he said. “So much time has passed. What if she doesn’t want me? Rose, I am the thane. I swore to protect the hold, swore my life, my heart, and my soul to it.”

“How can you protect the hold if your heart is elsewhere? Cullen. Go to her.”

He thought about leaving, finding her in Skyhold, the great keep she had spoken of and called her home. He could find it, perhaps. He knew the mountains, as did Rylen.  
“What if she is not there?” he asked.

“Try,” Rose said. “Find her. Bring her back and make her yours. The augur has spoken, seen the signs. She believes you will find your mate in the ways of old. Maybe she meant Lydia.”

“Capture,” Cullen said, as if it were a curse. He knew the custom well. The thane before, and the thane before the other as well found their bond mates that way—plucking a woman from another hold to theirs. On both occasions the acts had been consensual, but Cullen wondered of the many times before that they weren’t. “I cannot take her if she does not want it,” he said.

“But you can go to her. Please Cullen. Find her. Will you want to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been? Go Cullen. Mia. Bran—everyone else. They will understand.”

His sister showed a wisdom so many others did not have. He nodded, embracing her, before finding Branson that morning. As he hunched over the wood, finding one for the hearth, Cullen told him what had to be done.

“I am…to be thane, while you are gone?” Branson asked, incredulous. “Brother, I—”

Cullen put his hand on his shoulders. “I believe in you. You can. You were made for this just as much as I. If not more.”

And just in that moment, the fire blazed.

That was their sign. That was how they knew.

“Brother,” Mia said, before Cullen left their home. “Are you sure? Some time has past. What if she…?”

“I have to try,” Cullen said. “Our father told us once that he was crafted from the stars to be with our mother. And before they married, he knew that he was made for no one else, and it didn’t matter if she had chosen him. He was her man.”

“But mother was crafted for father too,” Mia said. “Lydia. She is the Inquisitor.”

“And if she takes me back or not, I was crafted for her. I have to try.”

He bade them goodbye, one by one. Rosalie kissed his cheek. Bran clapped him on the back, and in turn Cullen told him that he was meant for this. Mia embraced him tightly, kissed his cheek.

“Find her,” she said. “Find your star.”

Rylen wasn’t even awake when Cullen came to his home. That at least, made him chuckle. Some things never changed.

“Rylen!” Cullen said, shaking him awake. “Rylen!”

His eyes shot open. “What is this?” he demanded. “What are you doing, you dolt? Can’t you see that—”

Cullen threw him his knapsack, smirking “Get up Rylen. We’re going to find our lowlanders.”

He realized, he should have started with that. “I had wondered,” Rylen began, rising, “When you were going. I almost left without you.”

Cullen smirked. “To Skyhold?”

“Aye,” Rylen said. “To Skyhold.”

To Skyhold, where lay his heart.


	8. Chapter 8

He was there, in Skyhold. He was there, he was there, he was there.

Josephine was the one that had told her. Of course she told Lydia, and of course everyone in the fortress knew. Two Avvar men arriving at Skyhold was news that was bound to get around, one named Rylen, and the other named Cullen.

Her Cullen.

How she almost cried in her room, how she wanted to run to him. How she wanted to turn back time.

She wanted to be whole again. Wanted to take him in his arms the way he deserved. And when she thought of how she couldn’t…

What would he say to her? What would he do?

“Lydia?” Josephine asked, standing by her doorway. “Lady Cassandra seems very friendly with the dark haired one. And the other claims that he knows you well.”

“Yes,” Lydia muttered, blankly and with no emotion. “He knows me well.”

“Would you like to see him?”

Yes, yes, yes.

She didn’t even so much as look up to Josephine when she answered. “No.”

“Ah,” she replied. “Well then, would you like me to…send him away?”

She leaned against the side of the fireplace. “No.”

“Lydia, I don’t—”

“I love him Josephine,” Lydia exclaimed, turning toward her. Something inside burst them, something she didn't even know she had kept bottled. “Maker. I love him, and being without him all this time has hurt more than anything in my life.”

“You love him? When? How did it even happen?”

She quickly relayed what happened between both her and Cassandra, Josephine staring with a mixture of pity and understanding. “If I would have known before the Exalted Council that I would go to Stone Bear Hold, and fall in love with an Avvar man, I would have never believed it,” Lydia said when she reached the end of it. “But it happened. And had I known about this…I…”

She closed her eyes. Sometimes she could still pretend it was there. Sometimes she thought herself the same that she always had been. And then every time she remembered, it was like the first time she found out again. She didn’t think she would ever live without that pain. Didn’t think he would even still want now.

And that hurt worse than the loss.

“I can’t face him,” she said, helpless. “Not like this.”

“He wants to see you,” Josephine said, more gentle than she deserved. “And Lydia, I think you do too.”

Maker. She did. More than anything.

“I do,” she admitted. “But…”

“Lydia.”

“Tell him to meet me here,” she told Josephine. “But don’t tell him about…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She hadn’t ever been able to. “Josie. Please.”

Lydia half expected Josephine to say something in regards to that. A man, an Avvar man, coming to your room? It couldn’t happen. At least, that’s what Josephine may have said before.

She said none of that. She only nodded, and said she would bring him in. And Lydia knew that though she never spoke his name, never told anyone how they joined in the glen before that moment, and how she loved, she didn’t need to. It was written in everything she had done since she parted from him. Her love was engrained in her soul.

She didn’t ever need to say it, because they knew how much she burned for him.

 

* * *

 

He stood by her door, where the ambassador Josephine led him. He had not felt his heart beat since he parted from her.

So long it had been. Too long. Yet he did not run or rush as he always thought he would, as he stood outside her door. Maybe it was because part of him knew: something was wrong.

“Go,” Josephine said. “She wants to see you.”

“Does she?” Cullen asked. “Why did she not come out when we first arrived? Cassandra did.” She ran to Rylen, practically. The two had become inseparable since as well. “Why didn’t she come?”

“It’s difficult,” the lady ambassador revealed. “But I promise you: she wants to see you.”

He knocked on the door. He heard her voice, heard her tell him to come in. The ambassador nodded, departing, and Cullen took a deep breath, before he walked into the room.

“Lydia,” he said, climbing the steps, standing by the doorway. He didn’t see, not at first. He saw her, alive, in the same space that he was. He saw her blue eyes, drowned in them, and never wanted to come up for air.

“Lydia…”

“Cullen. I—”

That was when at last he ran. He ran to her and threw his arms around her and lost himself in the softness of her, and the feel of her skin. “Cullen,” she muttered, again and again into his arms. “Cullen…”

“I have lain awake at night. Aching. Needing you,” he muttered, cradling her face in his hands. “My lass. Lydia. Love. I love you.”

“Still?”

“Yes still,” he said, not knowing why she even need to ask. “I told you. You were my only. You are my only.”

She didn’t say anything, only broke free from his arms. Only then did he see it—all words becoming gone, and everything stilling. She looked away from him, forlorn. Stricken. Ashamed.

“Lydia?”

“The mark,” she said. “It was killing me, and this was the only way. But Cullen, look at me. I can’t do hardly anything for myself anymore…I can’t…”

“How long?” he asked. “I would have ran to you had I would have known.”

“Months ago.”

She did not reciprocate as he tried to put his arms around her again. So he didn’t. He merely stood near her instead.

“Why didn’t you come back?” he asked, too meekly.

“I was afraid,” she answered, wrapping her arm around herself.

“Why would you ever be afraid?”

She was on the verge of breaking. He wished she knew how he never wanted to stop holding her.

“Because I wasn’t sure if you would want me anymore.”

Was he the one that drew the first tear, or was it she? Either way, he came bear her, called her his love and wrapped his arms around her, inhaled her scent. He searched for it every night that he was away from her, trying to find it somewhere in the furs he slept in. But it wasn’t ever there—of course it wasn’t, they had never shared a bed proper before. He caught her fragrance then as he held her, became intoxicated by it.

“Love,” he chanted, again and again. “My only. Why would you ever think that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, taking him in as he took her in. “Cullen. I can’t even hold you how I want…can’t…”

“You hold me, and I know,” he said.

“Do you?”

“More than anything I’ve ever known before.” He kissed her forehead. “Lydia. Do you still love me? Do still you burn?”

“A day has no past where I have not burned for you.” Her fingers were at the back of his neck, drawing him closer to her, if that was even possible. “I love you more than anything.”

“Then that is all I ever need.”

She was about to weep before him—yet he kissed her fiercely before she could break or fall apart. “No more tears,” he said to her. “Just be with me.”

“Even if I’m not whole?”

“Please. Never say that. Never, ever, ever think that.”

“But—"

“Lydia.” His lips were gentle. “It doesn’t matter if it takes all night. Let me show you how much I love you.”

He kissed her softly first, made a promise with his lips. He always saw this moment, their moment of their reunited joining as hard and fast. Heated breaths, his body slamming into her as she moaned and panted. Yet that’s not what it became. He sought to make love to her slowly, paint her body with his love, litter her with gentle affirmations of how much he loved her, missed her, and didn’t care what had happened to her.

He grasped the fabric of the dress she wore, taking it and pulling it over her head. He stripped her of her breast band and stripped her of her undergarments, and when she was naked before the soft fire glow, his hands began tracing all the wonderful curves of her body. Better than any fantasy he could conjure. Better than he remembered.

That was when he saw it—the glow of his brother’s coin, at the base of her neck.

Her fingers flew to it. “I never wanted to lose it. Never wanted to be without it. Do you mind? I’m sorry if—”

He kissed the skin underneath the coin, sealed it there with his lips. “Never be sorry.”

He knelt before her, held her, and she gripped the curl of his hair as he kissed her belly and began his worship. He could already smell her musk, the scent of her never something he could properly remember when he was parted. He took another moment to fully breath in her scent, kissing her thighs and down her legs as he did so. He painted old pathways with his lips, finding a new scar on her left leg.

“Battle,” she said. “With a sarebaas.”

“Sarebaas?”

“Quanari mage,” she said. “At the Exalted Council, before we disbanded the Inquisition, there were invading Qunari in the Winter Palace. My mark had been hurting, worse than it ever had been. But I had to press on. One of our own—Solas. He was outed as an agent of Fen’harel. We had to press on. I thought for a moment I was…well.”

“What brought you back?”

“My will. Not wanting to die like this. Wanting to see you again.”

He swelled with happiness.

“But Cullen. I still remember. Still—"

“It’s over,” he promised. “You’re safe now. Nothing will ever happen to you as long as I’m here.”

“That wasn’t all Cullen. Solas. He’s—”

“I don’t give a damn about Solas, not now,” he told her. “Or anything other than you being alive. Lydia. Love. Forget everything. Be here with me now.”

“Cullen…”

“Tell me everything later. Everything.”

She nodded, closed her eyes, and beautifully surrendered. His lips lingered at her belly. It had lost some of its roundness, he realized. In her sorrow and despair, she had not eaten. Now he was the one biting back his tears. She should have never had to endure her sorrow alone. He should have been there. Should have—

“You’re here now,” she whispered, sensing, knowing. “You’re here.”

His hands grasped her hips. “Tell me what you want.”

“Make me come.”

“How?”

“I want your mouth.”

He rose and lifted her into his arms. She gasped as he held her like that carrying her to the bed and setting her down gently. He understood that no one had picked her up before, no one had carried her. How he would carry her for a thousand miles, if she asked that of him.

As she sat on the bed he knelt before her, reverently kissing the top of her foot before softly biting into her ankle as his hand kneaded the sinews of her calves. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, spread her further apart as her fingers gripped though his hair.

“I missed your taste,” he muttered, knuckles lightly over her clit. She bit her lip, sighing at that smallest touch like she did the first time he touched her. A rediscovery this night would be then, as well as a worship of her. He hummed at the thought, further drawing moans and sighs from her lips. He missed the sounds, just as he missed her, and his tongue darted over her clit, briefly moving across her pooling wetness to hear more, taste more, have more of her.

“Say my name,” he told her, briefly nipping at her damp inner thighs. “Lydia, I missed that—you saying my name. Let me hear you.”

“Cullen. Cullen. _Cullen_.”

She chanted his name like lowlanders sometimes prayed for their Maker, and as he encircled her clit with his mouth, her thighs tightly squeezed around him. How beautiful she looked when she came, and he tasted more of her. Ethereal, rosy. His. It further aroused him, further alighted him. And she was outstretching her arms, wanting his body over hers.

He stripped himself of his clothes and laid himself next to her. Satisfied, at least for now, she reached for him. She wanted to touch him, he understood, and his cock twitched as he thought of her soft hands on his body once more. Her touch, her kiss. Her fire.

“Touch me.”

“I want. But…”

Something in the air shifted, something in her. He could sense it, knew it before he saw her eyes fall, saw when all happiness that was in her before dissipated. But it dissipated, because she remembered.

And it broke his heart.

“Lydia, love,” he said, his fingers down her arm. Gently at first. She did not flinch, so that compelled him to continue his caress, compelled him to kiss her shoulder, kiss all the way down to where she had lost.

“You don’t have to,” she told him. “Really. It won’t hurt me if you don’t want to look.”

“But you’re beautiful. Even more so now.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No,” he promised, lips seeking hers, bestowing a kiss that was both fierce and gentle.

She caressed his jaw. “You’re not just saying that?”

He kissed her fingertips. “I would never lie to you.”

Her eyes were a sea. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

His breath caught as she pressed herself close to him, his cock right against her heat. Her leg wrapped around him, pressed him closer.

“I want…” he said, biting back his moan.

“What love? What do you want?”

“Touch me.”

She laid him down on his back, and as soon as he felt her body over his, he surrendered. Such a wonder he felt with every place she kissed and every part of him she touched, how it thrilled him to think how just as he imagined touching and kissing her body in their time apart, she had done the same. She had been hungry for his touch, his mouth, his everything, and she showed him just how much with an ardor and joy he could never understand before her. It was a thing other people felt, not him, and his one soaring thought, was what had he ever done in his life, to be able to hold and worship this woman? What he ever done to have her want him in turn?

He could question it forever. It didn’t matter. She was there with him. Alive, and they were making up for their time apart. And it made her so happy to have him again like this, to please him, and he realized that though he had called this night a rediscovery, it became a rediscovery of a different sort—one were he rediscovered her lust and want for him. He rediscovered further as she grasped his cock and gently pumped, forgetting how much better her hand was than his own. Forgetting how exquisite her mouth was, tongue darting across the tip before sliding down and taking all of him in. He hit the back of her throat and he wanted to protest she didn’t have to, he would never expect something like this, but how _fucking good_ it felt, how wonderful. Up and down she went, her free hand grasping underneath to cup his rear. Anymore of this he would spill in her warm mouth, and while he considered it, knowing they had time for other things later, the prospect of feeling her heat snugly around him was too much. He wanted it. Needed it. Needed—

“Lydia,” he said, grabbing her hair. “Ride me.”

There was a loud pop in the room as she stopped her ministrations. He outstretched his hands, and she climbed astride him. He guided himself inside her, and the sensation was just as it had been the first time. Warm, snug and tight around him, enough to take his breath away, that he had to keep her there for a moment, lest he come too quickly.

His eyes drifted down to where their bodies met. It was already almost too much before he looked. That alone could have made him come and spill. That or her the sight of her on top of him, body covered in a light sheen of sweat, hair undone. The face of Andraste between her breasts, and the blue of her eyes. Beautiful, brave woman. Woman who survived, and had marks that proved it. Not a loss. A sign she had survived.

How he loved her.

“Cullen. You feel so good,” she muttered, biting her lip as she further became used to the feel of him. “Maker, I missed you. I ached for you at night. Not just this, but talking with you. Being with you. Cullen. My love. My only…”

“Never leave me again.”

She slid up, and then down, never fully allowing him to leave her before slamming back into his hips, Cullen grasping her waist so she could better balance and move.

“Never,” she promised. “Never, never, never…”

The fire and embers danced and danced as Cullen rose and wrapped his arms around her. She was on top yet she allowed him to move her hips and grind them against his cock, allowed him to be the one that set the pace. Fierce and wild it was, his mouth sinking into the soft hollow of her shoulder before lavishing her neck with kisses.

“This is me, right here with you,” he promised her. “This is Cullen.”

“I’m not Lydia when I am not with you. This is home.”

Home. His fingers drifted toward her clit, made her come on his fingers and come on his cock. He pulsated, shook, and kissed her as he spilled inside her, his end feeling like the burn of fire. They shared a kiss as they floated together through the air, and he wondered if they would ever come back to earth.

The answer should have been plain: he had never come back to earth, since he had met Lydia. He met her by the fire, joined with her by the water, and had never returned from the fade since they met.

“I love you,” she told him.

“I love you too.”

They sank to the bed, still holding onto each other. Not letting go. “Thank the Maker you came back,” she said.

“Rylen and I. We were lonely. We had to.”

She chuckled. “Cassandra. She missed him. I daresay the two of us might have been a little ornery during all this.”

He laughed as well, lavishing her with kisses. “You know what this means, Lydia love?” he asked after a moment, his mouth still traveling down her neck.

“What?”

“We can spend the night together. Wake up in the morning together.”

“And you won’t leave, come morning?”

“So long as you’re here. Never.”

Radiant she was, when she glowed like that. Perfect. “No time for words,” he whispered, his lips lingering on her forehead. “There will be words later. I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

“I have so much to tell you as well,” she replied. “But Cullen. I don’t want to talk. No time for words now. No going either. Just this. I only want this.”

He nodded, sighing in a contented bliss. And for the first time since they parted, Cullen felt as though he could rest easy. Yet as Lydia fell asleep in his arms, he found he didn’t want to. He only wanted to hold her.

How easy it would have been, to lose her. How she could have never have come back.

She did, he reminded himself. She did.

So he held her. He held her as she slept, and he remembered what it felt like to have the rest of his soul.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not responsible for the cavities this chapter may induce.

On her wedding day, they sat before the Lady of the Skies.

Cassandra stood near, next to Rylen, and next to Mia, Rose and Bran. In love they looked on, as Cullen took her hand, and the priestess declared them claimed to one another. The entire clan bore witness as the thane of their hold, their protector, swore unto the Lady of Skies, that Lydia would be his only.

“Marriages are temporary to the Avvar,” Cullen had told her earlier. “Some of my people think it’s strange that I am going to take you as my only. They worry that you instilled too much of your lowlander sensibilities into me.”

“Perish the thought,” Lydia said, putting her hand to her mouth in a mock scandal. “Me? Turn you into a lowlander? Why it’s as if you weren’t born a Fereldan.”

He had a good laugh at that, but never the less, Cullen took her hand, and announced it to the hold, that she was now his bond mate. His wife. So long as he breathed, and so long as he lived, she would be his, and he would be hers.

She wore a dress of ashen white on her wedding day, made of silks Mia and Rosalie spun at the priestess’s great loom. Ropes spun from a golden thread tied it together, and in her hair was adorned a single red rose. She had never felt lovelier, never felt more loved as Cullen partook in the tradition of carrying her to the altar, to the priestess who would bind them together as bond mates. Poems of love and adoration passed between Lydia and her love as the priestess spoke in the oldest of languages, binding the two in a sacred pact. They sealed it with a kiss after, like perhaps they would have done at an Andrastian ceremony. For Cullen once may have said that the Lady of the Skies was what he believed, because that was what made sense to him. And though Lydia was unsure of Andraste and the Maker, she wanted that kiss to seal their union. Cullen was what made sense to her. Cullen was right. Kissing him then, to seal their union, was right.

There was a great feast after, were as a couple, they received blessings from the hold and well wishes for their bonding. There was dancing near the Lady’s hearth, Lydia and Cullen joining the grand circle, accepting blessings from each and every member of the clan.

“You make him so happy,” Rosalie said as they danced together, and Lydia received her blessings from her new sister in law. “He must make you happy too, you haven’t stopped smiling since you arrived.”

“It’s not just him, though I will admit he’s quite a large part of it,” Lydia said, flushed from exertion during the dance. “It’s you all, and the Hold. I feel like I belong here.”

“Better than large dresses, balls and dangerous machinations?”

“Much better.”

Rosalie grinned, ear to ear. “Good. Because you’re family now. And if Cullen does anything to let you go, I’ll slap him myself.”

They laughed together, Rosalie eventually switching for Cassandra. “So Cass,” Lydia said, “Will we be having a wedding here for you as well?”

“Perhaps,” Cassandra answered. “Though I’m not one for dancing, I don’t really think—”

“You, not one for dancing? Why that’s the silliest thing I ever heard. You’re dancing right now!”

Cassandra didn’t have anything to say to that, and Lydia laughed and laughed.

That was how the night went on, Lydia and Cullen receiving prayers from everyone that lived in the hold. It was strange. All those years that she served as the Herald and Inquisitor, never feeling as though she belonged. But this. This was where she belonged, were it was easier for her to be Lydia. Though in some respects, she had to admit, living with the Avvar was harder. Every person amongst the hold had their place, and if one person did not till the land as they should have, or partake in the hunt, or join the harvest, the whole clan would suffer. Yet there was so much trust within the people. That was one of the things that Lydia loved most, the fact that there was trust. People believed in other people. They believed in Cullen, their thane. He loved Lydia. And even if she was a lowlander with more lowlander sensibilities than Cullen, Rosalie, Mia and Branson combined, they respected that love. That’s what was missing with the lowlanders. There was hardly any respect. Even less love. Yet that was what the Avvar freely gave, to each and every one.

The night finished with one last dance between Cullen and Lydia, amidst the great fire that still brightly burned. To the sound of bells and drums they danced as a prelude to what would happen during the night, when they would partake in a dance of another sort. The dance finished with a crescendo, Cullen sweeping Lydia in his arms, and all watched as he carried her away from the hearth, to his bed.

“The night is ours know,” he promised her. “Only ours.”

The thane’s bed was a grand one, laid out in planks and covered in furs. She had missed the furs that they laid upon in the glen, missed the way they felt against her bare skin, and it was divine against the softness of her dress. Cullen set her down, stripping himself of his clothes. She longed to go over and help him strip. Perhaps kneel before him and take him by the fire as a prelude to the rest, draw the night out longer. But there was a tradition among the Avvar, one between newly joined bond mates, where the bride never so much as placed her foot on the floor during the night after standing before the Lady. Cullen intended, very much, to withhold that tradition. Along with another that made Lydia particularly compelled. One that involved ropes and leather.

“Lass,” he said turning near her, with the glow of the fire contouring the strong slope of his shoulders, highlighting the sinews. He stripped himself of his breeches and boots, and when he was naked before her, she took the full sight of him in. Radiant, beaming. Want already apparent.

She felt her heart flutter, her lust draw. “My thane,” she said, heat rising. Waiting for him.

His eyes were wide with lust, his mouth half parted in appreciation. Slowly he climbed atop the bed, across her body. She shivered as she felt the heat of his arousal through her gown.

“There is a tradition,” he began, his breath against the crook of her neck as he settled himself on top of her, one his hands grasping the fleshy curve of her hip, while the other ran through her hair. “A tradition where the thane ties his lass, and makes love to her that way.”

“Ah, bondage,” Lydia muttered, draping her leg across his. “Interesting.”

“Of course, some don’t like to be tied down. It’s all dependent on what the lass wants.” He left the briefest of kisses to her pulse point. “Bran gave me the ropes, in case you were interested. Along with something else.”

“What something else?”

“A blindfold.”

“Well,” Lydia began, squeezing his arse, “that sounds…tantalizing.”

“Tell me what you want Lydia. Exactly what you want tonight. I will only do what you want.”

As it had always been. Tenderly, she kissed his forehead. “I don’t think I want to be tied up,” she admitted. “I like touching you far too much.”

“I like it when you touch me, lass.”

“Good.” She further pressed her leg over his. “Though Cullen, I will admit. The blindfold sounds…interesting.”

His smile was wicked. Devious. She felt the wetness that pooled between her thighs. “Get the leather blindfold,” she said. “And have me how you want me.”

She watched him climb out of the bed, reach for it. She appreciated the ropes and sinews of his back, the strong limbs of his legs and curve of his plump arse before he came back to the bed. “Tell me if you ever want it off,” he said.

She nodded, and the world of color and shapes became a world of blackness, touch, and Cullen.

It began with his strong and callused hand down her leg, gripping her ankle, and pressing a warm kiss there. She wondered if he would remove her dress, or if he wanted to make love to her with it on. Her unasked question was answered when she felt him grab the silks, and let it feel across his fingers. Further he hiked up her dress, and she could see the smirk he must have wore, upon discovering she had forgone any undergarments.

He was achingly slow that night, Lydia acutely aware of every little sensation and caress. The furs on her back, the feel of his hands, and the glide of the silks of her dress. The way he touched her satisfied yet made her hungrier, hands gripping, teasing. Slow he was, with his touches. Slow to bring her to a soft and rolling end with his fingers, and then another with his mouth before he slipped inside her. She draped one leg over him while he gripped the other, the stretch adding to the sensations. He held her hand, reminding her he was there, he would always be there. Wonderful, long moments passed between them in that gentle rock, before she felt Cullen reach, and undo the blindfold. Their eyes remained locked as they came together, his fingers on her clit mingled with the warm spread inside her. She held him afterwards, stroking his hair, indulging in the afterglow of their first coupling as true bond mates. With his weight on top of her and he still buried inside her, she became reborn. This was her, with the man she loved. The thane’s wife, her people the Avvar. Cullen was the other half of her soul, and without him, she would be able to breathe, yet not live.

He stripped her of her dress only when his eyes became heavy. Little kisses here and there lulled her to sleep in his arms. She dreamed of their life together. She dreamed of their children. She dreamed of only happy thoughts of their future, until she saw Solas.

The nightmares had gotten worse since the Exalted Council, since her loss. The cruelest part of all was the fact that often in her dreams, she was as she was before. Then she would wake up in tears, because she remembered. She had hoped this would not happen, not on her wedding night, but fate had not seen fit to give her one reprieve. In her dreams she chased after the wolf, wanting answers, demanding them. He only mocked her, taunted her. She woke still thinking she was there, reaching for the wolf. That was when she remembered, and her face became covered in tears.

She felt him stir next to her, felt him kiss the tears away. “I’m sorry Cullen,” she told him. “I wanted to wake next to you with a smile. I don’t want to burden—”

“Don’t ever use that word lass. You can never be that to me.”

Slow tender kisses meant to soothe became kisses of longing and lust. When her hand drifted down, caressed, and made paths, Cullen pressed her back against his front. They made love that way, her back against his front. It was a slow and gentle rock, sometime passing with a deluge of kisses and caresses, and soft murmurs and words of endearment. In the time before, Lydia had never considered making love this way. She would have thought that perhaps because there was no eye contact it wouldn’t feel as intimate. But the way he touched her, the way his hands traveled down her body, and the way he nestled into her neck, murmuring his promises made her realize just how attuned their bodies were, just how right they felt together.

Eventually his fingers drifted toward her clit. Her orgasm was a soft, yet rolling, and feeling her end drew his own. He came, remaining inside her after, only drawing himself out after a passing and exchange of lips and tongue occurred between them. He inhaled the scent of her hair after, left kisses on her shoulder blade.  
His arms were a sanctuary, his smell of oakmoss and elderflower the smell of paradise. This was how she always wanted to be, wrapped and entangled with him, her bare skin against his. Coiled and safe in his arms. Perfect.

“Tell me something nice, Cullen,” Lydia said, continuing to hold onto him. “Tell me something good.”

“The most beautiful, brave woman I have ever met is in my arms. And she loves me,” he breathed onto her skin. “And I will never let her go.”

He rose to look at her. She touched his face, and he kissed her fingertips. “No,” she said. “Never let me go.”

“This won’t be an easy life that we will live together,” he said.

“We must do what we are supposed to do,” Lydia said. “Protect. But for now…”

“For now…” his lips met with hers. “For now, this is all I need or want.”

A time would come when Lydia would have to take up arms again. Go to Tevinter, where Leliana was beginning to recruit. A time would come when Solas would rise again, and Lydia would have to be there, to stop him. But she would have Cullen by her side.

Avvar. Man she met by the water, then again by the fire where they danced. Her love, her soul.

Dance they would together, always. Dance, and live.

Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have one more thing, an epilogue of sorts, and then that will be the end of my romp in Avvar land. Once again, thank you so much for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, this is the final part! Warning for cavities that may happen.

“Dance together always, and live?”

Lydia nodded, her dark hair splayed against the white pillow. “You don’t like the ending to my story?”

“I just can’t believe you thought through all of that,” he admitted. It had been quite the story too. Full of love and loss. Surprising, to say the least. He wondered if he should have told her to write it down and publish it.

She laughed, covering her face with her hands. There was something about Lydia’s laugh that never failed to elicit him to join in. Cullen would have been remised not to laugh with her about this, this strange story that she imagined and told him. As he always did he joined her laughter, and peppered her face with adorative little kisses that further made her giggle.

“It’s very creative of you, that’s all,” Cullen said of the story, still bewildered and amused. “And I’m not sure how I feel about…er…being portrayed as an Avvar warrior.”

“I’m sure I’m not the first to imagine you as a thane,” Lydia said.

“Maker. That’s a thought.”

She giggled again, idly reaching for him so she may play with the wisps of his hair on the base of his neck. “Rylen too,” he brought up. “You really think Cassandra would have fallen for Rylen that quickly if he was an Avvar?”

“Maybe,” Lydia replied. “I feel like any woman who has read as much smutty literature that she has would kill to be swept off their feet, especially if the person was right. And I always knew when they met at Griffon Wing Keep that there was something there. Rylen’s the type who likes it when a woman can break him in two. Her witty tongue certainly helped. And Cassandra too always fancied men who tell it like it is. His biting wit matches hers quite well.”

Cullen nodded, just having to agree with that one. “Did you read the letter? They’re setting sail for Nevarra,” he said. “I am glad to see they’re well.”

“I’m sure they’ll have quite the adventure.”

“Quite. But Lydia…”

“Yes my love?”

“Would we have fallen for each other that quickly, had things been different?”

She paused, before admitting that she didn’t rightly know. Not for sure. “I think there was something about you that I was drawn to, before that day you kissed me on the battlements,” she said. “Like when I first saw you by the rift, and I saved your ass from that demon.”

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Not a chance Rutherford.”

They laughed together, Lydia continuing to play with his hair, caress his cheek. “Really though,” she said, quieting. “Something did connect us, for lack of a better word. We were both just insecure at first. About our pasts, about the war, about if we were crazy for even wanting a relationship. But we found a way together. And I don’t think it matters where we would have come from, if things had been different. You an Avvar warrior, me still the Inquisitor. Or maybe things would have been so different, that I would have been the flower seller in Denerim you passed by every so often, too afraid to talk to until I bumped into you at the fair. But no matter how our story is told, or how many variations there are, I know we would have come together. I know we would have found a way to stay together.”

Their kiss was soft, and slow. Different stories they may have had, had things been different. Different origins, different ways of being together. Yet Cullen knew she was right. No matter what their story would have been, they would have chosen each other. No matter what their stories would have been, only her kiss would leave him satisfied.

“You were right about one thing,” he said to her.

“Hmm, what would that be?”

“You are the other half to my soul.”

As they continued to kiss, the early dawn light spilling through their open window in their home in South Reach, Cullen’s hands drifted down, as it always did, to swell of Lydia’s belly. He felt the flutter of movement—the flutter of the new life. Their new dawn. And he wondered, as Lydia carelessly wiped away that single tear that had fallen from his eye, how the boy who lived in a time of war, and never once thought he would never be happy again, could turn into the man who lived in peace, and had more happiness than he ever thought he would have.

“She always kicks when your hands are on my stomach,” she mused. “She loves you already.”

“She?” Cullen asked. They had talked somewhat of names, should the babe be a boy or a girl, though there was nothing they had seriously considered. And Lydia didn’t mention yet what she thought the gender would be. Said it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to Cullen either. All he cared about was that the baby would be theirs. Part of him, and part of Lydia.

“I’m beginning to think she will be a she,” Lydia admitted, forlorn. “I’m sorry Cullen. I know you probably want a boy to spar with, and—”

“None sense.” He kissed her forehead. “I want them happy, more than anything. I want them to be who they are supposed to be.”

She grinned, radiant in the light of dawn. That was when it happened—when he got the idea, and he told Lydia.

“Aurora?” she repeated.

He nodded. “We should name her Aurora. After our new dawn.”

“Aurora then,” Lydia muttered, allowing the name to play on her tongue. “Aurora.”

“I love you both,” he whispered. “So much.”

“And I love you. I love us together, no matter how we got there. As thane of an Avvar hold. As commander and Inquisitor…”

He wrapped himself in her body, her taste. As she told him a story that morning, he set out to tell her one as well, one about how much he loved every curve of her body, including the way her pregnancy had made it grow and change. He told her a story with his lips, about how no matter what their story would have been, she was the second part of his soul. She was loved.

He grew to love, and be loved in return. And what was more, it was by Lydia. He grew to love Lydia, and be loved by Lydia.

That was his favorite story of them all. It was a story he couldn’t wait to tell their Aurora.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this is where I always saw the story heading, but you can read this chapter as an epilogue of sorts. Just like how DA has multiple endings, I'll let you as the reader decide which is the true ending. Either Lydia and Cullen lived among the Avvar, or this was merely a story she told him. 
> 
> Anyway, I want to thank everyone who commented, left kudos, and supported me. You all rock. Thank you so much! More to come from me! I'm still working on my slowburn novelization of Inquisition, but after that I have more things up my sleeve :)   
> <3


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